Life in Dark
by Cherry13
Summary: After the events of past few weeks, Shepard and Garrus attempt to get their mission with the Reapers back on track. Instead, they find themselves entangled in the Shadow Broker's dark web. Sequel to "Insubordinating." A/U Rated M for violence/language/sex
1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

"Zael was already dead when I got there. You can confirm it by Shepard and one of our associates if you need to."

"We have had good dealings with you in the past when you worked at C-Sec, Officer Vakarian. We will take your word. However, there is the matter of payment. We did trade information to you. I believe we can make an exception for you." The agent rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. All things considered this second meeting with the Shadow Broker wasn't going that badly. It was the same, nondescript character that Garrus had talked to last time. Probably assigned to any and all dealings with Garrus and Shepard for the foreseeable future. It built a feeling of familiarity that the Broker could exploit later on. The psychology of it all wasn't lost on the turian. Garrus checked the timepiece displayed inside the Sirta Foundation's store. Had to leave soon. Ezmay would be waiting, and of all days, he didn't want to be late today.

"What did you have in mind?" Garrus asked. Credits may as well have been draining from his account already. He could practically hear them being siphoned out.

"The Shadow Broker would prefer a favour to be arranged for in the future."

A giant red flag ran up in Garrus's mind. Never, ever, _ever_ be beholden to an information broker. He shook his head.

"I'd rather just give you money, if it's all the same."

"It's not." The agent pursed his lips, his right cheek quirking upwards in thought. "Tell you what. I know how distraught you were. I'll take your offer of credits to the Broker, and we can contact you in a few days, let you know what he thought."

It was as good as any deal he was going to get. Either way, Garrus hadn't been able to deliver Zael Hollinth, as per his deal with the Shadow Broker. It hadn't been through any fault of his own, but didn't change the fact that he hadn't paid what he'd promised. Of course, Zael being dead did remove the corner she'd had on the Shadow Broker's business, so maybe that would be a point in Garrus's favour. A small voice in the back of his thoughts reminded him that he'd had no intention of paying up anyway. He pushed the voice back down. Wasn't relevant. _That_ bit of information was a moot point by now.

"I appreciate that. Shepard and I will be on the Citadel for a few days. I'm sure you'll be able to find me."

"I'm sure we will." Now the agent smiled. Reached inside of his expensive suit and pulled out a slim, blue envelope. He laid it on the table, and slid it across to Garrus with one tobacco-stained finger. Curiosity got the better of him, and Garrus picked it up. Inside was a hard copy of a reservation for six days at one of the premier hotels in the Okelani Ward. He could practically smell the flowers and champagne wafting off of the fine parchment.

"Uh…don't mean to look a gift reservation in the mouth, but what's this?"

"Wedding present, from the Shadow Broker. Of course, we already know. Your appointment with the legal reps in charge of that sort of thing didn't go unnoticed. You and Shepard are hot commodities. Or should I say you and Madame Vakarian?"

The turian honestly didn't know what to say. One part of him was revolting, screaming out that one didn't accept expensive presents from the Shadow Broker, anymore than one owed the Broker favours. At the same time….it was the Hotel Travertine in the Okelani Ward. They had private villas with private beaches, and that was just for starters. He had a mental image of Ezmay standing naked in the manufactured sun, imported white sand on her skin and her hair hanging wet around her face. He saw their clothes lying in crumpled heaps on the beach and saw himself taking her, right there in the surf. Or maybe she'd change it up like she periodically did, and take _him_ while the waves rolled in over them. Garrus felt his plates shift and swallowed hard

The agent noticed Garrus's hesitation, and laughed at him.

"No strings attached. This is an honest-to-God gift."

Shit. Shepard would be impressed. She'd be swept away by romance. He liked the thought of her swooning while he looked like the good provider. Not that she would, but it was a nice thought. There was something about it that stirred his instincts.

"Thanks. Tell the Broker thanks."

"I will." Already, the agent was moving to stand. The expensive fabric of his suit caught the light of the neon signs in Zakera. "Congratulations, and good luck. It's not every day you see a turian and a human tying the knot."

Garrus reckoned that the agent had a point.

* * *

Ezmay grasped the datapad in her left hand, and pressed her right thumb to the smooth surface of the glass. The pad flashed orange, and beeped, confirming her mark and her agreement to the legal document. With that, she was tied to him. It was confirmed. She turned her eyes to the turian standing at her side, and found him beaming down at her. Ezmay smiled, and Garrus gave her his own turian version of a smile. His eyes were happy. Talons slid out to curl in her fingers, and he tugged her closer to his body. Now she was his wife, his mate. What was it he'd said? Heart of his heart. She adored it. Idly, she wondered if she could come up with something as clever and cute to embarrass him with.

A line stretched behind them, full of couples and singles waiting to change some sort of paperwork or another. Some were like Ezmay and Garrus, waiting to make the legal change from single to paired. Some were just straightening out other affairs. Regardless, the couple behind them looked annoyed. An asari clerk glanced over the datapad, synchronizing it with the official archives, and glanced up at Ezmay. She didn't even blink at the tattoo marks across Ezmay's face. It must not have been the first time she'd seen a human tie herself to a turian. Late at night, Ezmay and Garrus talked about all sorts of things related to relationships, mating customs, rituals and such in order to learn more about one another. She had been shocked to hear that certain turian circles had developed a taste for human women shortly after the First Contact War and Shanxi. It was the smoothness, the lack of plates, the softness of the human female that aroused and excited. Seeing men with men, and human males with turian females was quite rare. Ezmay thought that was sad.

"Any name changes I should input? If you do it now, it's free of charge. If you choose to change it later, the normal fee applies."

Ezmay was momentarily annoyed that the asari looked towards her and not Garrus, but the matrimonial name change must not have been common in turian males. She and Garrus had discussed it. In the end, she decided she wanted to take the name change. Names didn't really matter to her, but it seemed to satisfy something primal and possessive in Garrus. Ezmay knew when he said it didn't bother him that he was telling the truth. Also known to her was that the thought of her with his name, his markings, his anything on her, made him unspeakably happy

'_Of course I'd be honoured if you took my name. But I'm not going to be upset if you don't. Your name is your own. I understand the feeling of attachment to it.'_ He'd said. Ezmay loved him for it.

"Yes." She said. "I want to add 'Vakarian.'"

"Thumbprint here." Again, Ezmay pressed her thumb to a datapad. Just like that, she had a new name, had a permanent relationship.

Then her knees started shaking. Garrus must have felt the wave of trepidation, because he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her close.

"Not too late for an annulment." He whispered. That fact was debatable, considering the relationship had been consummated weeks ago.

"Don't be fatuous, Garrus. It's just this is big for me." She smiled to him. "I didn't think I'd ever get married."

Married. It was a weird word for Garrus. It didn't translate exactly over to the turian language. She said married, and he heard 'tied.' He couldn't half believe it himself. But knowing that Ezmay was tied to him made him feel better. Made him feel content. It had become painfully obvious to them both how much they meant to each other, even with a whirlwind romance of a few months. How long had they known each other? Nearly three years? Long enough. They were a well-oiled machine. The words would never cross Garrus's lips, but it was fortuitious for him that death had parted her from Kaiden. Fate was strange that way. All things happened for a reason, he supposed.

"Is the ring okay?" Garrus's mandibles were flicking in sudden consternation.

The silver band on her finger shone new and bright in the neon of the Citadel. He'd wanted to do the traditional human thing, buy her a polished mineral that caught the light. Ezmay had dismissed it as unpractical in their line of work. The slim band of silver around his talon was going to take some getting used to, but he was already forgetting it was there. It probably seemed silly to some people, but the tradition of wedding bands was old and ingrained in parts of human culture. It was as part of her heritage as the marks were to his. Ezmay raised her hand, and waggled her fingers at him.

"Fits like a glove."

The document processing was done, then, and they were on their way. Everywhere in Citadel space, now they would be recognized as mates. A rush of blood went to Garrus's head. He caught her up, swinging her around. The white silk of her dress brushed around his trousers. It was charming, to see her disarmed, to see her happy.

"Come along, Ezmay Vakarian. We have a vacation ahead of us."

A vacation, to be followed with a visit to the council. Maybe Ezmay'd get lucky, and she'd get fired.

'_Not likely._ She thought. Didn't want to think of the Council right now. After their complete lack of support during the whole Saran ordeal, followed by the Collectors, as far as she was concerned, they could go suck it. She had half a mind to resign anyway; if Cerberus wasn't so godamned twisted, she might have honestly considered the possibility of permanent employment with them. At least they had the budget and the willingness to get shit done.

"So, where are you taking me?" Ezmay changed her line of thought, and gave Garrus what was meant to be a disarming smile. He seemed disappointingly unaffected, though he did playfully reach down and grope her ass.

"Travertine, in Okelani Ward." Now he looked smug, and she could understand why. The son of a bitch had been holding out on her!

"Travertine!" Her voice came out a little louder than she'd planned; A couple of asari nearby looked in their direction. "Since when can you afford that?"

"Vigilantism pays better than you think." His mandibles gaped; he looked pleased with himself.

"You didn't have to bankrupt yourself. I would have been fine maw-hunting on Tuchanka." She said. "Or…you know…you could have let me pay for some of it."

"You would have been fine with getting right back to work." Garrus narrowed his eyes at her playfully. "Let's just be honest."

Ezmay laughed. The turian knew her too well. They were too alike, she and him. It was probably going to be more work for her, just shutting off and enjoying laying on a beach.

"Screw you, you damned silly turian." Ezmay pulled him with her, in the direction of the transport hub. She swiped at him with the handful of calla lilies she'd bought earlier.

'_Oh, I intend to_.' The look on Garrus's face was positively lecherous; He knew Ezmay'd 'felt' the burst of thought because she'd started laughing once more. It was wonderful, this link between them.

"Let's go." Garrus said, letting himself be led along. "I've got this fierce itch for some wine and briscola for some reason."


	2. Chapter 2

Nearly a week luxuriating on man-made white sand beaches on the Citadel, and it wasn't nearly enough. Although, Ezmay had to admit that she'd gotten a nice tan from the ultraviolet lamps that beamed fake sunlight down onto the waves. The melanin in her skin loved her right now; she was tromping around the wards with…dare she say, a spring in her step? The salt water, the rest and relaxation, the copious amounts of sex…it had all done her good. Even her injuries were distant memories.

_Thank you, Cerberus, for the advanced healing. You bastards._

Miranda met Ezmay and Garrus on the Presidium, eagerly passing off datapads once she spotted the two wandering in her direction. Idly, Ezmay wondered how Miranda had enjoyed her time as acting captain while they'd went on leave. Probably still smarting. She knew the loyalist had only grudgingly forgiven Garrus for moving up to second-in-command during the whole Auralia fiasco. At least Miranda had the grace not to make a stink over it. She'd even taken to helping Ezmay with her non-Cerberus related activities. Clever little chit. Ezmay knew that Miranda was double-tasking the administrative duties with gathering intelligence on the Alliance and the Council. If Ezmay wasn't carrying a grudge, she might have interceded and put a stop to the surveillance.

"You got here right in time." Miranda said. "Your meeting with Councillor Anderson's in twenty minutes. You're due to speak with Council as well."

"Work, work, work…" Ezmay glanced over the datapads and found an itinerary. Her attention drifted after that. Worry about the Reapers had begun to consume her mind after she and Garrus had checked out of Travertine. They were coming. She knew the defeat of the Collectors hadn't stopped them. Not one iota. She'd dealt with the devil, and let the Illusive Man have the Collector base, though she'd halfway suspected that it would end up a situation like the derelict Reaper, with husks to the gills and nothing to show for it. She had to face up to the fact, however, that there were very few organizations with the manpower and the resources to put what they'd found in the Collector base to good use. If the Council would just stop its endless bickering and squabbling and just focused, they could actually devote the resources of all the Council races, probably the non-Council races….but whatever. They wanted to play politics. She'd just take the Reapers down herself. Maybe. The Collector base had been by one Reaper. And Saren had been under the control of another. Again, just one Reaper. A fucking fleet of them…..the thought made Ezmay's stomach constrict with anxiety. If the races didn't pull together, they were all well and truly fucked.

Ezmay suddenly felt the aura of a migraine coming on. She gladly let Garrus take the datapads out of her hands.

The elevator trip up to Councillor Anderson's office was shorter than she remembered. Maybe they'd splurged and actually fixed the damn things. Soon enough, she found herself facing David Anderson. She wished, fervently, that she could have taken a picture of the look that went over his face when he saw the tattoos. And when he noticed the slender wedding band on her finger as they shook hands. Laying on a beach had put her in a mischievious mood. She laughed at him when he crooked his head at her.

"Since when did you get married? And to whom?"

He had to have been thinking Alenko. Ezmay turned and glanced to Garrus over her shoulder.

"I'm improving relations between the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy." She grinned to Garrus, and turned to face Councillor Anderson once again. The look on his face was golden; he looked shocked and then some.

"You know…for being on the Council, you're ill-informed." She said.

"Well, congratulations." Anderson awkwardly extended a hand to Garrus, who came forward and shook it. The turian looked as ill-at-ease with the handshake as Anderson did with all the new information.

"Thank you. I expect Udina's going to piss himself when he finds out." Garrus said.

_That_ got a smile out of Anderson.

"Anything to keep him on his toes is certainly welcome."

Just then, a beep from the console let them know they were due up to speak with the rest of the Council.

"Give me a hint. What are we facing here?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I can't imagine that you'd be in trouble for anything."

"Why do I get the feeling that I'm becoming the black sheep of our little family?" Ezmay crossed her arms.

"I've been talking with them, about investing resources into looking at the Reaper situation. They're still not ready to admit it's a threat." Anderson said, moving towards the console.

"They're going to have to get their heads out of their asses at some point." Garrus spoke from behind Ezmay. "Better if be before the entire Reaper armada's knocking on the front door."

"You probably don't want to mention that to them, though." Anderson grinned at Garrus again. The Councilor was beginning to really like the turian. He was starting to see what had drawn Shepard and Garrus together. He pushed the button, and the three holograms sprang to life. All three councilors turned to face Ezmay in unison, and she felt the familiar feeling of irritation and sheepishness that she'd always felt when dealing with the Council. Bureaucracy. It fucking aggravated her.

"Commander Shepard. Or should we call you Commander Vakarian now?"

"Shepard's fine. I added a name; I didn't get rid of one."

"It would have been nice to have seen this update in your last report." The turian councilor's tone was disapproving. _There _was a shock. Suddenly, Ezmay wondered if the prejudice Garrus had spoken about before, about turians and humans mating, was present and at work here. This guy had always been on her ass. Now he sounded downright nasty. No one was ever going to forget Shanxi.

"My paperwork was submitted to you before the legal change was made. It was technically correct at the time." She said.

"Just so, Commander. Congratulations to you." The asari councilor said.

"Thank you."

"Do you think it was wise to make such a decision without consulting the Council?" The turian asked. Ezmay could feel Garrus bristling. The air in the room went charged with tension, and she could feel his irritation bubbling in the pit of her belly.

"I didn't know my personal life was subject to Council approval." She replied. Her voice was calm and cool. She wasn't going to let him ruffle her feathers.

"There are political implications when a Spectre ties herself to an ex-Spectre candidate and a political dissident."

"Excuse me?!" Ezmay was stammering out, just as Garrus burst forth with "Dissident?!"

"Neither Shepard's marriage nor her choice in partner matters here!" Anderson said.

The asari and salarian councilor fixed the turian with a stare, but he continued on.  
"Your actions reflect on the Council. Frankly, it's disturbing that you chose not to remove the tattoos when you had the chance. This is a practice common to the Terminus systems. What does that say about you, and us that we choose you to represent us?"

"Better to be marked than to be bare-faced, isn't it?" Ezmay said hotly.

_That_ shut him up. The ignorant human, speaking about turian culture. The turian glared at her.

"I'm reporting for assignment." She persisted. "If you don't have anything for me, I'm sure I can find something else."

"With Cerberus?" The turian shot back.

Ezmay gritted her teeth. Fought the words back. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that Cerberus at least saw the threat of the Reapers and was moving to fight it. She just couldn't stomach another round of air quotes and the sarcastic tone. Her face didn't betray any emotion. Instead, she stared at the Council holograms in silence.

"As a matter of fact, we do have something for you, Shepard." The salarian spoke up.

"I'm all ears." Her voice could have been acid.

"The death of Zael Hollinth was a boon to the galaxy. She had her hands in some nasty dealings." The asari said. Was there bad blood there? The asari councilor seemed detached as usual. "It occurs to us that it could be just as advantageous to have the Shadow Broker out of commission as well."

"Jesus Christ. You want me to take down the Shadow Broker? What, was there some massive red sand binge in the Council chambers before this meeting?" Ezmay goggled.

"We're not sending you into the unknown unprepared, Shepard. We'll have a full mission outline for you, as well as contacts and recommended methods of insertion."

Insertion. So she was going deep cover? She'd never been special ops before, but there was usually one way these things went down.

"Let me guess. I'm publicly denounced as a traitor and cut loose. The Shadow Broker jumps on me. Commence betrayal."

The turian councilor smirked at her, if that odd flaring of mandibles could be construed as a smirk. Ezmay felt anger from Garrus once again.

"Something like that, yes."

Smug bastard. Bet he'd been waiting to drum her out of the Spectres ever since her induction. She clenched her fists at her side.

"How are you so sure that the Shadow Broker'd even want me in his organization?"

"Talents such as yours aren't bound to go unnoticed. You're already working for Cerberus."

"That was a one-time thing." She reminded the turian councilor. _And it was only because you were too busy playing grab-ass to focus on the threat._

"We happen to have procured a piece of information that we know for a fact that the Shadow Broker doesn't have yet. It will make you more valuable to his organization."

"Again, I'm wondering how you're sure that he doesn't have surveillance equipment in this room. For all you know, he's already on to you."

"Have faith in us, Shepard. We're not completely helpless. And we had faith in you when we gave you carte blanche to pursue Saren."

Carte blanche, or plausible deniability for them? Ezmay hadn't decided yet. Instead, she bit her tongue. It was a possible in; a good plan. Enough of a job to work on while she was waiting for the Illusive Man to finish his analysis of the Collector base.

_Then I blow this popsicle stand._ She thought. _Garrus was right; this place is a fucking mess._

"Alright, then. How's this going down?"

"You will be publicly stripped off your Spectre status. Meanwhile, Council files, which are eyes-only, will list your status as deep-cover. Covert ops. You will be taken into custody pending investigation. We recommend you make a daring escape from the Citadel, at which time you will receive a data packet aboard the Normandy with the information you are to present to the Shadow Broker as a good faith payment. Once you're working for him, do whatever you need to do, work as long as you need to in order to find out who exactly the Shadow Broker is. When you've found out, contact Councilor Anderson." The salarian said.

"This is a long-term project." Garrus said from behind her. "Not to be crass, but how exactly are we paying the bills?"

"However you need to. I'm sorry, Shepard, but we can lend no Council resources to you, besides a last paycheck before we strip you of Spectre status. The fewer loose ends, the better." The asari said.

"Fine. What am I being charged with?"

"Conduct unbecoming." Again, the turian piped up. He truly seemed to relish telling her this. Honestly, she couldn't ever remember him being truly this nasty. "Your working with Cerberus, a fabricated history of insubordination to the Council, and your sudden decision to mate with a vigilante."

Now her mouth dropped open; Garrus shoved past her, shouting words in a harsh, guttural language that the translator wasn't catching. Councilor Anderson was starting forward too.

"That's outrageous! Shepard's personal life is not subject to Council whim!"

She could have scarcely believed this was happening if she'd not been there to see it with her own eyes. The three alien councilors were arguing, _arguing_, amongst themselves. It had always been plain that the asari and the salarian had kept the turian in check, but now he was speaking fiercely with a hatred that couldn't be contained. He must have always had it out for Ezmay; for the life of her, she couldn't understand why. Though she did understand why his hatred had recently become so brittle in days past. There it was…the racism and the disgust that Garrus had warned her about. It was like being on Earth.

Ezmay lifted her chin. She'd been on the receiving end of nasty glances and foul words before. She wasn't lily-skinned, and she was a female who'd gone through boot camp and physical training just like every other Alliance soldier. Hell, even Alenko'd run into his share of racism during his days with Vyrnnus in the biotic training camp.

_Hell with this_. She thought, and cut through where Garrus and Anderson were exchanging words with the Council. Didn't even hear what they were saying.

"All right, then. You want to toss me out for mating with a turian, so be it." Her voice cut through the argument like a hot knife through butter. Silence surrounded her, and she fixed her gaze on the turian councilor. "I'm not an idiot. I know you loathe me, and loathe mixing species. Whatever. I'm not letting my personal dislike for you get in the way of doing my job. I'm at least that professional."

The asari councilor stepped forward in her own physical space; the hologram shifted, appearing larger.

"My apologies for that outburst, Shepard. I suggest you and Officer Vakarian make yourself comfortable for the evening. In the morning, we'll send C-Sec for you, so be prepared.  
Ezmay nodded stiffly. She fixed Anderson with glance. The expression on the old councilor's face was mournful. Bastard had known and he hadn't prepared her. The silence on their end carried over past the hologram's vanishing, and she stared at him. Just when Garrus had started to shift from foot to foot and speak, she cut him off.

"I see you're taking lessons from Udina."

"That's not fair, Shepard." Anderson looked like he'd aged a decade within minutes. She flicked her eyes over him, reading his posture. He looked ashamed, sullen.

"My ass it's not. Why'd you let them blindside me?"

"I couldn't bear it. I didn't have the stomach."

"You could have prepared me." She clenched her fist, feeling the wedding band bite into her palm. It suddenly occurred to her that she ought to just let the Reapers come back. Should just let the whole of it all fall, and take the Normandy off somewhere in the furthest reaches of space. Live out her life in peace, free of back-stabbing and betrayal.

"We should go, Ezmay." Garrus lay a hand on her shoulder. "If this is the last time we're going to be able to move freely on the Citadel for a long time, I want to enjoy it."

"Okay. Fine. We should probably tell the crew first." She made the point, watching her words land like daggers in Anderson's mind.

She turned, then, with Garrus and Miranda trailing behind her. Neither of them spoke further; they knew when Ezmay needed to be left alone to stew on her thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

Ezmay had been sleeping peacefully, fingers curling and flexing over Garrus's fringe. His mind was drifting, touching on the fierce sex they'd had the night before. She'd been angry, and Garrus had found himself only too willing to oblige her some stress relief. He needed it as much as Ezmay though; He remembered shoving past her and shouting ancient turian words at the councilor through the hologram. The translation system didn't catch the antiquated syntax, the dialect used since the beginning of turian history.

'_Your marks should be stripped from your plates! You act without honour!'_

He was thankful that no one else but the turian councilor had caught that. Fortunately, everyone else was too busy bursting out and shouting in disbelief to also hear the councilor's hiss in reply.

'_You spread your marks too freely.'_

It enraged him every time he thought about it. How dare anyone accuse him of mating beneath himself? If anyone was mating below themselves it was Ezmay. After everything that she had given the universe and all that she had done…

But he quashed the thought. Garrus knew she hated dwelling on the racism and didn't give much weight to the opinions of idiots as she'd called them before. He supposed eventually he'd learn not to let it bother him so much.

Garrus slid his arms around Ezmay's waist, and flipped her over to her back. Her eyes popped open, and she smiled a lazy, indulgent smile at him. His talons roamed over her ribs, down over the smooth skin of her belly, and over the muted hipbones below layers of muscle. Damn, if the smooth landscape of her body didn't get him hot. He saw a human fetish in his future. There was something luxurious about all the skin and the feeling of rough claws digging into muscle. He was a pervert by nature; didn't bother telling Ezmay that because it would likely have different meanings in human culture. Now he feared that he was becoming deviant by turian standards. If he ever had a turian woman again, it just wouldn't feel the same. Wouldn't be as exciting.

Garrus lowered his head to her neck, and traced his talons down her arm much as he had the first time they'd met in her quarters. A contented purr started to build in him; his plates started to shift. He could feel Ezmay's face twist into another smile against his forehead. Below him, one of her legs snaked out to wrap around his waist, the burning heat of that intimate place between her thighs pressing against him, and making him groan. He resolved right then and there, with the heat of her sex burning against him, that he was going to bury himself within her and pleasure Ezmay until all thoughts of the Council had flown from her head. Until she couldn't think about anything but what new and interesting positions they could try.

At least, that was before the door of their rented room on the Citadel burst open and spewed forth C-Sec going all guns and ammo.

The pair lurched up, eyes flying wide open at the sudden noise, the shouting and yelling. Ezmay simultaneously reached for her pistol and yanked the sheet upwards to cover her nakedness. Garrus didn't care so much about modesty as he was up on his feet, plates shining and standing in all his naked glory. It was a little disconcerting having guns leveled at his chest while he stood there nude, no armour between him and anything they chose to fire at him. His erection was nearly completely hidden again, plates closing over it. Just as well. If this turned violent, he didn't want anything important getting shot off.

He knew they were coming, Ezmay knew…but they didn't expect to be interrupted like this. It was barely morning, and they'd expected a polite request for entry. Maybe a message over the intercom. Not a squad of C-Sec officers staring brazenly at Ezmay's nudity, and averting their eyes from Garrus's waist. He placed himself between her and the squad of human and turian officers. It didn't escape him, the looks of disgust on some of the turian faces. The lack of respect, the open disdain. Shanxi and the Relay 314 Incident were still fresh memories, no matter how much progress had been made since then. To find another turian enjoying the embrace of a human…Well…Garrus could just imagine what they were thinking.

"Stand down, Vakarian. We're here for Shepard."

Garrus's mandibles parted, and he snarled at them. He heard the slither of sheets as Ezmay stood behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her tucking the sheet around her breasts. She laid her hands on his forearm, moving forward to face the C-Sec squad. The white sheet was sheer enough that he could still see the pink-brown of her skin through the fabric.

"I think you can afford me a little time to get decent."

"Go ahead."

The guns were alarming. The mix of humans and turians never lowered their weapons. In fact, as Ezmay moved towards the bathroom, they raised them further.

"We can't let you out of sight, ma'am." The leader of the troop said, a sort of lecherous grin coming to his face. The rage began to boil in Garrus's gut. Did they actually think they were going to stand here and watch her get dressed?

"The hell you say." Garrus snapped.

"Where's Bailey?" Ezmay said, freezing where she stood, and leveling a glare at the human who seemed to be in charge. Garrus squinted, and read the patch on his armour. 'Benson.' He filed that information away for future reference.

"Bailey's not in charge of this. I am. Orders are to escort you directly to the Council."

"I'm sure your orders didn't specify that I be naked."

"Like I said. You can get dressed."

Ezmay's mouth tightened into a hard, thin line. Her eyes washed over the squad, perhaps twenty men, an odd assortment of species. At least one or two of them looked embarrassed. Garrus made a mental note not to kick _everyone's_ ass later.

"Benson, I am not getting dressed in front of your men."

"Have it your way." Benson said, opening grinning now.

He took a step forward. It was, perhaps, a poor decision on Benson's part, because it was at that point that Garrus's memory became a little foggy. Luckily, he might have only thrown a punch at Benson, because he found himself restrained instead of lying in a pool of blood from a hail of bullets. Two C-Sec officers, one on either side of his held his arms, keeping him from rushing at Benson again. Ezmay was flanked between two other officers, one holding her upper arm while she held the sheet in place.

The young human sat on his ass, clutching at his jaw. The trickle of red blood seeping from his fingers made Garrus's heart roar with delight. There was an intense feeling of depersonalization; Garrus was outside of himself, watching from above his own fringe.

"See what this has come to! It's no better here than on Omega!" Garrus heard himself yelling.

"Garrus!" He heard her voice.

"You come in here like thugs! You're just mercs in fancy uniforms."

"GARRUS!" Ezmay's voice cut through him. Snapped him back into himself.

Benson struggled up to his face, swaying, helped by another officer. He spat blood at Garrus's feet in a way that told the turian that this wasn't over.

"Fine." His hands were still massaging his jaw. He must have walloped the insolent little bastard a good one. "You get five minutes. After that, we're dragging you both out piece by piece if we have to."

The C-Sec officer holding Ezmay let her go. A jerk of Benson's head towards the door and they all began to fall out, leaving Garrus alone with Ezmay. She rushed to him, turning his head to the right, and touching a wound that he didn't even realize he had.

"You stupid bastard. What were you trying to prove?" Her words were angry, but her voice spoke of something else entirely.

"That being disrespectful to you is a very bad idea." He said, turning his face back towards her. His claws slid up, through her hair, and cupping over her ear. Human men would kiss their partners in moments like this. Garrus settled for letting his claws scrape over Ezmay's scalp in a way that he knew she loved.

He would have hazarded everything in his bank account that the turian councilor had his claws in this. Now that Ezmay wasn't above the law, he could act as horribly as he wanted to her. Even when she was a Spectre, there had been that unspoken understanding that whatever she chose to do, she had the approval of the Council. Even if that meant going above their heads and acting implicitly against their orders, she still had their approval to do that.

"You pompous ass. I don't need you to stick up for me." The corner of her mouth twitched upwards.

This was true, but didn't change things between them. Didn't change the dynamics of their relationship. Ezmay might not have planned it out that way, but she'd still chosen a protective mate.

"Don't go all women's rights on me. You know I don't think that. I just had tactical advantage was all. They were all too busy chomping at the bit to see you naked."

The laughter exploded out of her as she moved away. They dressed in silence, landing little touches on each other as they moved about the room. Small contact eased the sudden tension that had sprung up.

They were out the door in three and a half minutes.

* * *

"Ezmay Gabrielle Shepard Vakarian, you are hereby stripped of Spectre status. You have been found guilty of all charges. Conduct unbecoming, aiding and abetting a known terrorist organization, aiding and abetting a known vigilante, and insubordination."

Garrus noted that the turian councilor didn't mention the part about mating. Weren't any laws against it. The heat of news cameras were burning into his eyes, and were drawing a sheen of sweat up on Ezmay's face. His heart ached for her. Personally, there wasn't much that fazed him anymore. But this…this had to be one of the most humiliating experiences of her life. First human awarded the status of Spectre and first to have it stripped away so quickly. Dammit…if Cerberus weren't so human-centric, he'd be urging her to sign up. The Illusive Man would hire her in a heartbeat.

"Do you have any final words before this meeting is adjourned?" The asari councilor asked her, emotionless. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ezmay bite at her lip. Probably trying to suppress what was really going through her head.

"I…I have served faithfully, loyally, and always in the best interests in the galaxy. You four know that." So, she was going to take a potshot after all. Anderson shifted uncomfortably to his left. If her words made him ill at ease, then he deserved it. Garrus cast a glance at Miranda. She looked bored, but he could recognize the nervous energy coiling and ready to spring within her. The loyalist stood with feet planted wider than normal, with her weight shifted towards the balls of her feet. It was almost daring-escape time.

"The Reapers are a very real threat, and I will continue to act in ways that promote the safety and peace of the galaxy. If you see fit to strip me of Spectre status because of my vested interest in protecting life as we know it, then I should have resigned a long time ago." She continued.

The Council might have thought that she was playing along, but Ezmay and Garrus both knew the truth of her words. They might as well have laughed in her face when she told them of Nihlus's death, of Ilos and Virmire. Even if she saved them all from the Reapers, it was going to be status quo forever. Endless bureaucracy and circlejerking. His plates felt like they were going to burn off of him, he was so angry.

"As you will, Shepard. You are to be remanded to C-Sec custody, pending transfer to a permanent holding facility."

"I don't bloody think so." Ezmay snapped. Her arm shot out, seizing Anderson by the collar, and jerking him over in front of her. A deadly, wicked little blade appeared in her hand, pressing close to the wrinkled brown skin. Quick as a snake, Garrus had his shotgun out and his back to her. He heard echoing footsteps as Miranda moved up. The electric crackle in the air heralded the biotic push that she launched at the Council. It was a marvel to him, the unplanned choreography landing each hit like it was all some master design. They'd worked together too long. Shimmering blue ballooned around them, Miranda mirroring the trick Samara had used on the Collector base to guard against the seeker swarms. No one knew if the biotic bubble would stop bullets, but no time like the present to experiment.

"I am leaving." Ezmay announced. "If anyone tries to stop me, so help me, I will gut this traitor and dance in his blood."

"Shepard!" Anderson gasped, sagging against her. The old man looked bewildered, irrevocably hurt.

"Shut up." She hissed. "I will kill you, Councilor Anderson. I'm not fucking playing along with this farce anymore. Fuck the mission. And fuck the Council."

She traded a glance with Garrus, who turned, keying up the radio to Joker.

"Engines hot?"

The pilot sounded terminally bored, though Garrus knew tension must have been singing through him.

"Scorching. There's C-Sec officers crawling all over the platform like a giant donut just docked."

Ezmay back them down, dragging Anderson towards the rapid transit hub that would carry them back to the Normandy. They were shadowed and watched every step of the way. The red shuttle that served this area of the Presidium opened up and Ezmay shoved Anderson inside. The three fugitives piled in, and Garrus held his shotgun on the old man.

"Never thought you were capable of this, Shepard."

Ezmay tilted her head up, peering at Anderson through the mirror. Was he seriously trying to start conversation with her, here, now? Was he going to give her a lecture? She jerked the controls, raising the shuttle up out of the traffic lanes.

"Anderson, why'd you recommend me to Nihlus? To Udina? Because I always get the job done?" Her voice was bitterness incarnate. "This is bigger than the Council. Bigger than the Alliance, the Hierarchy, the Hegemony, whatever."

"Going rogue? Or is this all part of the mission protocol you've chosen?"

Ezmay transferred the control to Miranda, who seemed intent on steering the shuttle all the way up to the damned Normandy herself. The ex-Spectre twisted in her seat, facing Anderson.

"What was the mission protocol again? Was it that C-Sec was supposed to bust into my room at the ass-crack of dawn and force me to do a reverse striptease in front of twenty men? Was that your idea? Or was it his?"

She referred, of course, to the turian councilor. Anderson looked properly appalled.

"I had no idea." The old man stared into Ezmay's face, who returned the look with a steely glare.

"Of course, you didn't." She didn't know whether to believe him or not.

Miranda had indeed taken the shuttle outside of the normal traffic routes, and through maintenance shafts mean for service vehicles. When they found the Normandy in dock, there were literally too many C-Sec officers for Garrus to count.

"Just steer this damn thing into the shuttle bay." Ezmay tapped a button on the console and spoke to Joker through the open comm. "Open up the shuttle bay and get us uncoupled from dock. We are out of here."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Councilor Anderson, I'm afraid you're coming with us for the time being."


	4. Chapter 4

"You can still change your mind, you know. It's not too late to still do the mission that the Council gave you." The old man said.

Anderson had free run of the ship. He knew no one was going to hurt him; Ezmay had expressly forbid it. He didn't have enough familiarity with the Normandy's upgraded systems to hijack the ship, and let's face it, he didn't have the balls needed to take Joker hostage and steer his way back to the Citadel. So Ezmay let him wander. It's not like he was going to go anywhere in deep space. Right now, he sat in the mess hall, staring at Ezmay over a chicken breast. She sipped at her coffee, black, strong, and spiked with a bit of Elysian rum. The heavy, sweet flavour of the rum put her in a good mood, and gave her the strength to sit here and gaze back at her old captain.

"Pardon me for being a bit reluctant to please after this last visit to the Citadel. You threw me under the bus, and that turian councilor…."

"Velarn."

"That _asshole_…"

"Look, Ezmay, I didn't mean to keep you in the dark." Anderson looked vaguely embarrassed, as if he were copping to having cheated on his math test. "The fact of the matter is that the Council is status-obsessed. There's a hierarchy even within the four of us. Since I'm the newest addition, there's a lot I don't get told."

"That's a pretty piss-poor excuse." She said, frowning into her cup of coffee. She was about to say more when the lift stopped and opened. The sound of the footfalls told her it was Garrus, left foot leading and gait determined. The turian was on a mission, and she suspected it had something to do with the rank odor that was coming from Gardener's pots. She never understood why Garrus's food smelled like scorched sugar.

"It's not an excuse, Shepard.'

"Sounds like it to me." She said, aware that Garrus would be able to hear everything. The chair scraped back from the table suddenly, and she was up and strolling away. Didn't want to talk to Anderson anymore. She was starting to forgive him, but right now, the anger was just too much.

Garrus stopped her as she passed him on the way to the lift. His talons curled around her forearm, and he pulled her close. They had just a second of privacy there in the hallway. Her lips went to his mandible, raising the coffee cup up out of the way.

"Hey, are you eating?" He murmured into her hair.

"Not hungry." She gestured to her coffee.

"I can bring you something up." In truth, he hoped to catch her down here, but she seemed to need some space. Garrus sniffed at the air; the old man was in the mess hall. Ah-ha.

"I'm good. I'll be in our cabin."

Garrus nipped playfully at her skin and let Ezmay continue on her way.

The smell of delicious food was soured by Anderson sitting sullenly staring at his plate of food. Maybe it was just Garrus, but the old human looked more tired, more aged since the days of Saren. Two years was a long time. He kept his eyes on Anderson as he accepted a plate from Gardner. He was almost distracted by the smell of the food. His stomach growled.

Anderson gave a short, sharp laugh from across the mess hall.

"Something funny?" Garrus turned, eyeing him.

"I'm just realizing how alike we all are."

"We're not alike." The plate of food settled on the table louder than he'd intended. Anderson looked up sharply at the sound of ceramic hitting the tabletop. "Not really."

"I remember when Ezmay was just getting started in her career with the Alliance. Her mother's a damn fine officer. Her father wasn't anything special, really."

Garrus didn't answer; only plopped down and started digging into Gardner's concoction.

"I don't know what happened to Ezmay in her training, but she's not the same girl that went into the service."

"She grew up." Garrus said around a mouthful of vegetable. "Seen a lot of people stab her in the back."

"I'm not talking about recently. She got a raw deal from the Council. I'm not denying that. I'm talking about Torfan."

The rich food went to sawdust in Garrus's mouth.

"What about Torfan?"

"She's always a kind of no-nonsense person, but to do what she did on Torfan, that requires something else."

"What's your point, Anderson?"

The old man shook his head, looking up at Garrus.

"I guess….I don't know, really. I never thought she'd put a knife to my throat."

"Didn't leave her much choice, did you? This whole mission was heavy-handed from the start." Garrus put down his fork and focused on the human before him. What did he want Garrus to say? That it would be okay, that she didn't mean it? "You had to have known that Velarn was out for her from the very beginning."

"Velarn's complicated. I suspect there's something in his history that has to do with humans; he's never acted as if I was truly part of the Council. I knew he was hung up on Ezmay's keeping your tattoo, but I didn't know how badly."

Now it was Garrus's turn to feel ashamed. Here they were talking about betrayal, and he had yet to reveal to Ezmay that he'd taken a gift from the Shadow Broker. Speaking of, he still hadn't heard back on terms of repayment yet. His mind clicked away.

"There's a part of turian society that still loathes humanity." Garrus's voice felt too loud in the deserted mess hall. Gardner had cleaned up and left in the short time they'd been talking.

"Shanxi."

No point in referring to it as the Relay 314 Incident, really. Each race had their own name for humanity's inglorious entry to the galactic stage, but each of the names tried to be delicate about it.

"Shanxi." Garrus nodded. "You know there were turians and humans that got….pretty friendly after that."

Anderson raised an eyebrow at him.

"There's xenophiles everywhere. Even among turians." His laugh came out cynical, self deprecating. "Hell, look at me. I even have a relative that was a so-called human-lover. If you don't fit in the Hierarchy, or if you buck the system, there are harsh consequences."

"So Velarn's getting back at you through her?"

"He's old-school. Probably didn't like her to begin with. Humans are seen as impulsive and individualistic, which is considered dangerous and counter-culture. I'm sure her keeping the tattoo pushed a button somewhere. But yes. He's probably trying to get me back in line too."

Anderson was quiet. His chicken had long since gone cold, and Garrus had no interest in finishing his own plate. Times like this, he would have liked to have a glass of turian ale in front of him. The silence on the Normandy was stifling. There was something about this conversation that was eerily like a debriefing session.

"Do you want to know what the information is?" Anderson volunteered.

"For the Shadow Broker? I guess." The look on the old human's face made the hide under his fringes constrict; he didn't like it.

"It's archaic, from old Earth history. I don't imagine many turians will look too fondly on the Alliance when it gets out. If it gets out."

"And?"

Anderson didn't have an omni-tool, so he handed Garrus a data chip to plug into his. He snapped the small black card into the hardware, and orange light illuminated the dining area. Garrus blinked at the data. Was that right? More than two hundred years ago?

"There was an air force base on Earth that was called Area 51."

The turian's eyes slid over to Anderson, and then back at the data.

"Turians crash-landed there. They strayed too far out on patrol, got curious. The government, then the United States, took them into custody. Poor bastards lived out the rest of their lives as science experiments."

Garrus cocked an eye at Anderson.

"You're screwing with me, right?"

"No. There are names. Look at them. They should ring a bell."

Garrus's eyes found the list of names. Interesting…that the captured turians supposedly worked out a way to communicate with human scientists.

Ituil Haran, Evraz Xiyvo, and Volocin Vakarian.

He frowned, staring at his own surname glaring back at him. This was impossible. Every member of the Vakarian lineage going back five hundred years was known to him, and there was no cousin, grandparent, whatever….named Volocin.

"This is bullshit. They gave you a story, not information."

"I thought that too, but then I checked turian records…missing ships. There's a missing ship listed at the same time in history."

"Alright, but how is this valuable? I mean, maybe to a history buff, but it's happened so long ago..."

"You don't think this would be explosive to the right people?" Anderson fixed him with a look. "Humans experimenting on three captive turians?"

Garrus waved his claws at the dataset.

"It happened nearly three hundred years ago. No one's going to care."

"You're not reading all of it." Anderson reached out and scrolled down the orange data stream. All at once, Garrus saw something that made his hide crawl and his throat close up.

"Hybrid breeding…what the hell?"

"Now you see what I mean?"

"Why the hell would you want to give this to the Shadow Broker?" Garrus was suddenly angry. If he could have pegged releasing this information on scale of idiocy that slid from 1 to 10, he'd put it at about a 37. Human history wasn't wasted on the other races; He knew about Nazism, monks burning themselves to death in protest, genital mutilation, and crusades. If one has something under wraps, why go exposing it for the world to see?

"This was sent to us. It's already floating out there. Eventually, it'll get to the Shadow Broker and be traded away. If we presented it first, we wait and see who the other informant is. Then take down the entire network from the inside."

"That's a pretty big 'If.' You've got to many variables in play." Garrus told him.

"Do with it as you will." Now the councilor sagged against his chair. He suddenly looked fatigued. "I'm turning in for the night. Will you tell Ezmay that I'd like to talk with her again, if she'll see me?"

Garrus was taking the chip out of his omni tool as the councilor stood. The small black card turned over and over in his claws, his mind suddenly working overtime.

"I'll tell her..." He mumbled. Barely noticed as Anderson walked away.

This…this information on this little black chip…It would mean something to someone. Likely the Terra Firma party, or any number of barefaced turian mercs. In that little data chip that Garrus turned over again in his claws, he saw the potential for war. It was inconsequential information to him…true. But not to other people. Not to conservative turians patriarchs that still argued against allowing the brash, relatively young species of humans on the Council. Not to human extremists who could easily look at all the genetic information on here and try replicate the research, or worse. On it, he saw everything he and Ezmay had worked for in the past three years destroyed. Garrus saw more strife where the universe needed to be equalized and united. He saw the budding relationship between the Alliance and the Hierarchy crushed and discarded in favour of supremacy. The term "scorched earth" had been bandied around a bit on the Normandy, usually tongue-in-cheek and referring to the Reapers. But that was really how the turian military operated. On that little data chip, he saw the colonization and subjugation of the human race, which could never be trusted because of their propensity for atrocities. Nevermind the fact that nearly every species in the galaxy had probably violated the rules of war at one time or another.

He saw him and Ezmay, never free to live in peace, always questioned, always harassed. It would make the racism they dealt with now look like polite inquiries as to when they were going to start having children, or what their wedding colours were. Garrus saw Ezmay torn away from him and he didn't like it one bit.

He opened his talons, and saw the remains of the chip, crushed beneath his claws. The small copper innards glittered in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the mess hall. His chair nearly tipped backward as he stood, shoving it behind him.

This could _never_ get out. Never.

The garbage disposal groaned and protested when he dumped the remains of the chip down the sink and flicked on the power. It shuddered, and then finally returned back to its normal hum when it had completely swallowed the copper and plastic. He could imagine it mixing with the chemicals in the disposal tank, meant to dissolve any kind of waste and liquefy it. Might even be shooting out into space as he stood there, running water down the drain.

* * *

When Garrus reached their cabin, he found Ezmay hunched over her terminal, dealing with ship reports. For a moment, he just leaned against the wall and watched her. She'd heard him, because she'd murmured something to him, but her attention was focused on the computer screen. He looked at the glossy black hair and the smooth caramel skin. It kind of tickled him now, remembering how he'd always been curious what human hair felt like. Always imagined it to have some kind of nerve ending, or be some organ unto itself. Which was silly, because he'd learned enough human anatomy in his military training to know it was mainly decorative. But all the fuss humans made over their hair. Garrus laughed at himself. Pushed himself away from the wall and came a step closer to trace a claw up the nape of Ezmay's neck. He was pleased with himself when he saw the skin on her arms prickle. She called them goosebumps. It was a silly word.

She looked directly up at him, standing behind her chair. Her eyes were amused. It didn't seem like she could ever look at him in anger, or be cross with him. How large and expressive human eyes were!

Hard to believe that at first he'd been the shy one. And yet here he stood, letting his talons slide down over her collarbone. Garrus bent to nuzzle at the top of her head.

"Insubordinating…" She said beneath her breath. The quality of her tone told him that he was doing everything right.

"How so?" He growled into her hair.

"You're interrupting me."

His talons went over her back, up under her arms and he plucked her out of her chair. The furniture toppled over. Garrus pressed Ezmay against his body, the soft curves of her cushioning his plates. Let her feel his plates shift and his arousal begin to peek outward as his hands roamed over her body. Ezmay's head lolled back against Garrus's cowl. His mandibles brushed against the skin of her neck, nipped at her.

"I'll interrupt you when I want." His voice was low against her ear, pleasure making the flanging more pronounced and guttural. He felt her shiver against him. They knew all the steps to this dance. His being arrogant was to be rebutted with her pulling rank.

"Stand down." She turned, her body rolling against him as she did so, her hand stroking over his waist and coming to rest on his growing erection. Garrus stifled a groan. Ezmay reached up, seizing the collar of his shipsuit and shoving him up against the wall. His talons shot out and seized her wrists. A quick twist of the body and it was she who was pressed against the wall, triggering the door for the bathroom. Garrus held both her wrists in one hand. It was almost like sparring, in a way. The vast majority of their lovemaking was playful, tender and charged with a romantic energy that left them clinging to each other. Every so often, they were like wolves…twisting and snapping and struggling for supremacy over one another. Usually ended the same way, though, with gentle whispers and teasing. He knew she liked the flip-flop of not having to be the one who made all the decisions. This was why she didn't protest when he yanked open the front of her uniform suit, grabbing a handful of the high mandarin collar and jerking it down so that he could ruin yet another undershirt. His claws scraped her skin as he bent his head close and nipped at her earlobe. He found her breasts already pebbled at the center, and growled his approval behind her ear. Ezmay's breath went out of her.

She weighed hardly nothing. Garrus spun her around and hefted her up over his shoulder. He walked the few short steps to where the bed was, one hand sliding over her ass and between her thighs as he carried her. Godamn, but it was tempting to immediately leap on her when he dropped her on the bed, but he held back. Didn't want it to be over just yet, but did all at the same time. He wanted to let the anticipation build up. His talons were tangled in her clothes, simultaneously stripping them off of her, and helping her ease off the more delicate garments. He had finished removing his own clothing when she tossed a small bottle of oil to him.

Usually they were careful enough that Ezmay didn't need the embarrassing lotions and ointments that Mordin had so 'helpfully' sent to her quarters before the Collector base. Every now and again, she was grateful for the cool creams and oils on her skin. His hands were very tender, as he pooled the fragrant almond oil on her skin, and smoothed it in. The sweet scent filled the room; the tips of his claws dragged at her skin, the heat of the tips of his talons burned paths into her thighs as he smoothed the oil onto her. When Garrus finally collapsed onto her, she smelled divine. His talons tangled in her hair, smearing the sweet oil through the strands, yanking her head back so he could nip at her. They never needed much preliminaries; he slid into her with a shudder of relief and a roar. Each stroke that he laid within Ezmay tore a cry from within her. He snarled, and growled, letting his claws draw only the slightest hint of blood. She thrashed under him, pinned to the bed, fighting with him and tearing at him as much as he was at her. They settled into a swift, aggressive rhythm that spoke of possessiveness with every beat. She claimed him as much with her hips as he did with his thrusting.

_Mine…mine…mine….mine.._

They took their pleasure together, both smelling of almond and musk. Garrus lost all sense of time and space. Only thought of her sweet warmth around his shaft, the feel of soft, oiled human skin beneath him. The heat of her breath on his neck. The flexing of her arms as she pulled him tighter and tighter to her body, as if she were trying to pull him completely inside of her.

When Ezmay screamed out his name, he couldn't hold himself back any longer. Knew he shouldn't be releasing himself inside of her, but it hadn't seemed to hurt her yet. Besides…it just felt too Godamn good to slam into her with that one final, violent thrust, and hear her shriek in ecstasy, feel her delightful little inner muscles clench on him, and know that for that moment in time…Garrus was the only thing that existed for Ezmay.

In the afterglow, they lay with hands tracing oily paths over skin and plates alike. His thumbs ground into the muscles of her shoulders and neck and worked all the kinks away. Rubbing the tension out of her body seemed to give her almost as much pleasure as their lovemaking had. Before she passed out from relaxation, she gestured sleepily for him to lay back. Her fingertips, they had found, fit perfectly into the crevices of his fringe. She tickled him there with almond on her fingertips and massaged his fringe until he was nearly a puddle of liquid sugar on the bed.

"I need to tell you something…" His voice was slurred. His body was thrumming with pleasured energy. Garrus felt lethargic and wonderful, but he needed to get this out before he forgot.

"Can it wait until we wake up?" Ezmay was shifting slowly in the bed next to him. He felt her bottom press up against his hip, and her back resting against his belly. She called him her own personal blanket with benefits. He didn't mind. Tough, muscled turian arms laced around her.

"Yeah…." He whispered, purring into her hair as he slid into sleep.

God knows it shouldn't wait…but he was too happy right now to break up the moment.


	5. Chapter 5

There were a few things Garrus envied humans; tattoos were one of them. Sure, turians could be tattoos, but they hurt like hell, and sometimes didn't take. When turians were of age and of rank, they went to specialists, got the marks laid in. He still remembered grunting and squirming in the chair, while his father stood watching him in disapproval. He couldn't imagine how Ezmay could stand to have so much ink with how sensitive her skin was. Must not have hurt too much, though. She had her fair share of markings, mostly in places that could be easily hidden by armour. His claw traced over the piece on her right shoulder blade. It was a sword, pointing down towards her feet, with wings sprouting from either side and unfurling proudly. Below that, over her right hip, was script in a language he didn't understand. '_Fortes fortuna adiuvat.'_

"What does this say?" He gripped her hip and rolled Ezmay over to gaze down at her.

"'Fortune favours the brave.' I think it does, anyway. I got it when I was young. Not sure if the latin's correct." Her fingertips started tracing over the plates on his chest.

It was fitting. Confession time. Garrus was unsure how Ezmay'd react, seeing as how tightly wound she'd been lately.

"Anderson wants to talk to you again."

Her eyes rolled back in her head, arm flung back on the sheets. Ezmay groaned. She rubbed at her face with her free hand and then fixed him with a look.

"Jesus…why are you bringing him up?"

"I think you might want to do this mission after all."

Irritation rolled off of her and right into his stomach, it seemed. He felt her sudden impatience. If he had any doubts, she proved him right by rolling away from him and getting up from the bed. Her robe was draped over her desk chair; she tucked her hair behind her ear as she shrugged into the delicate silk. Suddenly, Garrus suspected that she wasn't going to be as receptive to his confession as he'd initially hoped. If there was one thing he'd discovered, being so intimately bound to her, it was that her emotions changed on a moment's notice if she wasn't focused. There was a deep well of hurt buried inside of her somewhere that she never shared with another soul, and it burned her. It drove her and pushed her along this haphazard course in life. It was what made her so reckless and insane. One of these days, she might deign to share her secret with him, but until that day came he was content to let her be. If she'd made peace enough with it that she could live daily life, then it might be better if that deep hurt never came out. All he knew now was that she was thinking on it, and it was feeding her emotions.

"And why is that?" She was lighting up one of her black cigarettes now, and fixing him with a gaze that unnerved him. It was the "I'm reserving judgment" look. Usually preceded the "I'm shooting you" look.

"Look, I'm just going to lay it all out for you, and you can make of it what you will. Anderson told me what the information was that the Council wanted you to trade to the Shadow Broker. It's bad. It could drive a giant wedge between the Alliance and the Hierarchy. I destroyed the copy that he gave me, but apparently this information is already loose out there. We need to find the source and get rid of it before it gets out at large."

Her eyebrow went up.

"If you destroyed the information, we don't have a bargaining chip to play against the Shadow Broker."

"We do. I didn't tell you this because I wanted you to be impressed, but the Shadow Broker paid for the time at the hotel. And I still owe him for the information on Zael. I told him I'd give him Zael if he'd tell me where you were, but she was dead. I offered money, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet."

Ezmay's head dropped to her hands, the cigarette singing a strand of hair. He watched her brush her hair out of her eyes. Even from where he was sitting, he could tell she was gritting her teeth.

"The Shadow Broker paid for our honeymoon? When were you going to tell me?"

"He said it was no strings attached. Didn't think it would ever matter."

Ezmay sighed, closing her eyes and straightening back up. When she opened up her eyes again, she focused on him. Silence stretched out, for a good minute or more, before she spoke.

"Okay….first of all, don't hide things like that from me. It's the Shadow Broker. He doesn't give gifts."

"I realize this. It was a poor decision."

"I'm disappointed. You don't usually make poor decisions."

Garrus didn't like how her mouth turned down, or the set of her jaw.

"Now, two things come to mind here. On one hand, I'm tempted to make you sleep on the couch for a few days for overstepping your authority. On the other, it's hard to be mad at you for good intentions. Plus, this is fortuitous enough that it gives me a chance to get my foot in the door."

"You _are_ going to do this, aren't you?" He was surprised, in spite of himself. "You never stopped planning to do the infiltration."

"I never back down from a mission, Garrus. I might cut corners a bit, but I get the job done."

It was last bit of pride that she had, the last tie that she had to her military roots. Ezmay ground out the cigarette into a metal ashtray, and sidled closer to the bed.

"So, what, pray tell, was the information that the Council wanted us to give out?"

"There was a science facility on Earth. A few turians crashed there several hundred years ago. The dataset said that the human scientists used them for weapons experimentation. Some kind of quest to make a super-soldier, hybrid breeding."

That didn't blow Ezmay away. Every government from the beginning of time had been dirty in some way. And trying to make a super-soldier sounded just about right. Her morbid interest almost overwhelmed the fury she was fighting. Actually, fury wasn't quite right. She was more shocked about how awe-inspiringly stupid Garrus had acted. What was wrong with him? Didn't he understand that every gift, especially ones that supposedly didn't come with strings, was suspect?

"I don't want to be surprised with info like this anymore." She said.

"Ezmay, I swear it wasn't my intention to keep things from you."

"Just promise me you won't let this happen again." Garrus didn't miss the deep breath that she drew in, the stilling of hands trembling with irritation.

"You're letting me off pretty easy." His mandibles registered a bit of surprise. She didn't appear to be angry, not with the seductive way she was crawling towards him over the sheets. He was expecting less seduction and more yelling. Possibly bullets. Definitely sleeping in his old digs in the battery.

"Don't abuse that privilege." Her voice seemed calmer as she spoke. His talons had gone to the sash of her robe, but she swatted him away. Seriousness carried over through her tone. "You're my second in command, but you're also my mate. I can allow you a little more leeway than the rest of the crew, but don't get carried away with it. This all works so well because there's a chain of command. Understand that if we'd been in this situation few years ago, we would be having a very different conversation."

"I realize that."

"Good. Now you can apologize to me properly. Then we get started on strategy."

It was then that Garrus realized just how far gone Ezmay was for him. It's hard to stay mad at someone you love. He hooked his talons once more in the sash at her waist and tugged. This time she let him.

"I am sorry.." He shifted up to his knees, still drawing on the silk tie. "…that I was monumentally stupid."

* * *

"First of all, I figure if we come begging for a job, then he's going to know that something's up." Garrus's voice was scratchy. He'd spent entirely too much time in the past couple hours talking. Mostly apologizing to Ezmay for his massive fuck-up, and partly roaring with delight as she forgave him. He hated the way it cracked. Some water would have been downright refreshing right about now.

"Excuse me…why are we hearing this from you and not from Shepard?" Miranda's clipped tones interrupted him. He was about to offer a rebuttal when Ezmay spoke up.

"I don't have to hold your hand through everything, Miranda."

The brunette was pissed, Garrus could tell, but he didn't say anything about it. It was annoying, to say the least, the territoriality that the loyalist was still displaying to the position of second-in-command. You'd think, eventually, she'd get over it.

"Like I said, if we pop in looking for a job, he'll get suspicious. Instead we'll negotiate. No one in this room needs to help with that. That's on me and the Commander. However, if we do end up working for the Shadow Broker, we might get called on to do jobs of a questionable nature. The purpose of this meeting is to give everyone the opportunity to opt out right now."

Ezmay cut in, her arms folding. If anyone noticed the new shipsuit she was sporting, they didn't say anything. The black and white formal Cerberus uniform had been replaced with a black and khaki civilian outfit meant for commercial liners and freighters. Garrus had taken to wearing something similar.

"You'll notice the dress code has changed. You're free to wear whatever you want, same as the rest of the crew. We'll still run this ship under military discipline, but technically, we are not Cerberus and we are not a Spectre's ship. We're mercenaries now. The more we act like it, the more likely the Shadow Broker is to believe us when we turn in our application for employment."

The crew, the main team shifted uneasily, turning to direct glances at one another. Samara spoke up.

"Shepard, I'm most distressed at this turn of events. I would like to assist you, but I cannot be a party to any unjust act."

"I understand that, Samara. Nor would I ask you to be a party to anything that goes against your conscience. Our next docking will be at Omega, and from there we're heading to Elysium. I mean what I say. If anyone wants out of this, I want to know."

Garrus looked around as Ezmay spoke. Samara would, of course, have to leave. Thane was sagging against the conference table; he didn't doubt the drell would sit out the activities, but he probably wasn't going to leave the ship. Tali wasn't going anywhere. She was Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. This was her home. Grunt, Mordin, Zaeed…well..he just didn't know.

"No one else?" Ezmay asked. Heads were shook as she looked from one to the other.

"Right, then. If anyone decides they want out at any time between here and Elysium, just say so. No hard feelings." Ezmay nodded. "Dismissed."

As the crew filtered out, Garrus wound over to where Ezmay stood tinkering with the controls on the comm system. Miranda, they both noticed, stood there staring.

"What?" Ezmay snapped.

"This is highly unorthodox. You have my loyalty, but I don't know if I can work for the Shadow Broker."

"You don't have to." Garrus said to her. Miranda put up one black-clad hand.

"I'm talking to the Commander now."

"Miranda, you don't have to work for the Shadow Broker. Did you not just listen to a word I said?" Ezmay leaned against the console and leveled a gaze at the loyalist over EDI's glowing sphere.

"I know what you said. However, this ship still belongs to the Illusive Man. You can't just commandeer the Normandy..." Miranda was folding her arms over her ample chest.

"As a matter of fact, I can, and I'm going to. He's still analyzing the Collector base. I expect to hear from him when he's done. My first priority is the Reapers. Always. But until then, I do have other obligations."

"Yes, I understand. I still must protest..."

"That's not what this is about, and we both know it." Now Ezmay stood, folding her own arms. No time like the present to get this out in the open. Garrus knew what was coming too. He stood at Ezmay's side, where his proper place was. They were going to butt heads again, he could tell. Miranda's gesture of giving him the ship during Ezmay's time in Zael's base had been exactly that- a gesture.

"What are you getting at?" Miranda asked. As if she didn't already know.

"You know perfectly well what I'm getting at. You've never gotten over the fact that I chose Garrus for my XO instead of you. Let's get this all on the table."

"Commander, I never…"

"Save it. That _is_ what this is about. Isn't it?"

The loyalist looked away, abashed, and angry that Ezmay had called her out.

"Isn't it?" Ezmay prodded her.

"Commander, I understand that you're attached to Officer Vakarian..."

"I'd say attached is an understatement." Garrus said from where he leaned against the console.

"It's natural to want to give your partner a certain degree of power..."

"You don't understand, Miranda. Garrus is my second because I know him, I trust him, and I know I can count on him to lead where I can't. I'm sorry, but you do not command the level of loyalty and respect that he does among the crew."

"I disagree, Commander." Miranda's face was twisting in anger now.

"I don't. You can't work with everyone on this ship. Jack comes to mind right away."

"She's a lunatic! No one can work with her."

"That's simply not true. I realize it's not uncommon to have disputes and squabbles among ranked officers and subordinates, but the fact of the matter is that this ship functions better with Garrus as the XO. Or at least it would if you'd fall in line and accept it, rather than trying to usurp rank." Ezmay said.

"You just said this isn't a military ship anymore."

"No, I said this isn't a Spectre ship anymore. I run my ship military, as you well know. I don't know if this is just a pride thing for you, or it's because Garrus is a turian, but I'm telling you now. Deal with it, or we'll give you a ride to the Illusive Man's HQ so you can find another assignment."

"Shepard!" The loyalist looked shocked at the ultimatum. Surely Shepard wasn't serious…

"No. Make up your mind. Right now."

Miranda stood staring at Ezmay, aghast that she was actually being forced to decide. Perhaps the slim little biotic had thought that Ezmay would acquiesce and put her back in Garrus's spot. Perhaps she thought any other number of things would happen. Ezmay could tell that she didn't expect to be told to choose.

"I'll stay."

"This is the last we're going to hear about this?" Now Ezmay was leaning back down, looking at Miranda from under raised eyebrows.

"Yes."

"And you're going to obey Garrus's orders, without question?"

Now she just looked defeated. Her shoulders slumped and she looked away.

"Yes."

"Good. Now go look over the ship preparations. I need someone I can trust to look over the crew now while I'm negotiating with the Shadow Broker, and that's you."

"Yes, Commander."

Miranda moved out of the comm room with a level of humility that Ezmay and Garrus had never seen in her before. For a moment, Garrus nearly felt sorry for her. He'd never been on the business end of a Shepard-brand dressing down and he certainly didn't plan to.

"Think it's going to come back up?" She asked him, once more fiddling with the control panel.

"Maybe. Miranda's pretty Godamn stubborn."

"Tell me about it." She finished the code, and hit the confirm button. "Okay, it's your part of the show. Show me that badass, confident turian side of you."

With that, she moved to where she was standing just on the edge of the field of view. The Shadow Broker's agent would be able to see her, but the point of the conversation was for Garrus to accept, grudgingly, working off the debt and for her to seem reluctant. Their bank accounts weren't in fantastic condition and the Shadow Broker would know that. The goal was to seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"Officer Vakarian! So good to speak to you again!"

Garrus cleared his throat.

"Yes, well..I wish I could say that I returned the sentiment."  
"Come now, Garrus. May I call you Garrus?" The agent had a smarmy look on his face that Garrus wanted to smack off of his cheeks.

"You may not. This isn't a social call. I'm wondering what response the Shadow Broker had about the debt owed?"

"Yes, well…he hasn't quite decided yet. If you'll hold on a second, I'll patch you through to him and you can ask him directly?"

"Fine." Garrus hoped he was putting on good enough a show. He certainly felt as surly as he sounded. The agent faded from view, and a holographic eagle appeared on the screen.

"Interesting…" Ezmay murmured behind him.

"Officer Vakarian…" The same filtered, masked voice that Garrus had heard before echoed around the comm room. It reminded him of EDI's voice. "How was the honeymoon?"

Off to the side, Ezmay folded her arms and looked away as if disgusted.

"It was very nice, thank you."

"I see Madam Vakarian is irritated. Did the time at Travertine not agree with you?"

"I'm a bit angry that you dangle that gift before Garrus. How could he resist something like that?" Ezmay didn't move, but looked to the hologram.

"It _was _a gift. However, I see that we still haven't settled with Officer Vakarian for the information provided. I understand you'd rather reconcile with credits?"

"Yes." Now came the penultimate point. Garrus shifted his weight.

"Well, for the particular pieces of information we traded to you, I can accept 400,000 credits as adequate payment."

Even if he and Ezmay combined every credit they had in their accounts, it still wouldn't be enough. He felt Ezmay's hand on his shoulder, and she leaned close, whispering in his ear.

"That's lucky. We can't pay him."

"Surely we can negotiate on that price." Garrus addressed the hologram. Even the sum he was about to suggest was still out of their price range, but he just knew the Shadow Broker wasn't going to accept it. "I can offer you 250,000 credits."

"Now, Officer Vakarian, remember this information helped you to save the life of your mate. Lovely tattoo, by the way, Commander."

"Thanks." She growled.

"We don't have 400,000 credits." His claws tapped on the conference table. Better if the Shadow Broker could see it and interpret it as nervousness manifesting.

"Oh, my. Well, that _is_ a shame. See, that was very valuable information." Ezmay and Garrus could feel the strings of the 'trap' closing around them. It was just what they'd hoped. "Well, if you would reconsider the offer of simply doing me a favour…?"

"Pardon me, but I'm not too keen on the idea of working for you." Garrus said.

"Then we find ourselves at an impasse, do we not? I don't give out information, despite however much I may admire yourself and Commander Vakarian." Ezmay blinked at the use of her married name. "Really, it's not as bad as you may think, working for me. I'm not a complete slavedriver."

The filtered voice sounded complacent, amused now. Garrus could sense that Ezmay was tense. The twist of anxious energy was apparent in her face. They exchanged a look, drawing it out for the sake of appearance.

"From what I understand, you're not much in a place to argue right now, are you? Of course, you can go freelance…try to rack up enough credits from mercenary work and pay off your debt in installments. I do charge interest, you should know."

Ezmay exaggerated her look of consternation.

"Must be quite frustrating…being the first human Spectre and having that honour stripped right away..." The Shadow Broker was purring.

"What kind of favour?" Ezmay demanded.

"That remains to be seen. I certainly wouldn't give you any assignment that is beyond your considerable abilities. Perhaps later on, we can discuss a more long-term form of employment. If I understand correctly, you're bleeding credits. Your combined balances might be enough to get you to Elysium."

The paranoia level in the comm room ratcheted up about 50 notches on their traditional 1-10 scale. The plates on the back of Garrus's neck suddenly felt hot, and he could see hair standing up on Ezmay's nape.

"Elysium?" Ezmay's voice faltered now. How the bloody hell did this bastard know where they were heading? They'd only just decided last night. Was someone on the ship dirty? Had someone contacted him as soon as their crew meeting was over?

"Of course. It's where your family home is, isn't it, Commander Vakarian? After such a mortifying moment, and with such heat on your trail, you'll want to take a bit of a vacation, I imagine."

Garrus's heartbeat began to slow to something near a normal pace. So he didn't know…he didn't know what they were planning, that this was all a ruse. The crew wasn't dirty.

"How did you know…?"

"Where your family home is? Any child with an extranet link can find that out, Commander. Your personal information is surprisingly accessible."

"Fine. We'll do it." Garrus cut in.

"Garrus!"

"We don't have much choice, Ezmay. We're nearly broke, and I don't like having a debt hanging over my head."

She let loose a disgusted sigh, slinking away out of view of the hologram. Garrus waited a few short moments, as if Ezmay had left, before he spoke again.

"I apologize." He said to the Shadow Broker.

"It's quite all right. I think you'll find that working for me is quite pleasant. Mind you, we'll have to discuss and renegotiate terms, if this favour is performed satisfactorily and you find yourself seeking more permanent employment."

"I'm not sure about that yet." He told the hologram. "We could make quite a good living as mercenaries."

"I'm sure you could." The electronic voice just barely held back the patronizing tone. Barely. "I can, however, offer you and the Commander a standard of living you've not had before. Well…perhaps not yourself."

"What does that mean?" Garrus was confused. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ezmay's brown skin go red.

"When your mate is sufficiently calmed, perhaps you should ask her about her family's not-inconsiderable investments in land and livestock. You see, this is why I'm confused about your so-called inability to pay. Given the Shepard family's stock portfolio, I would have expected that 400,000 credits was a drop in the bucket. Perhaps there are circumstances that I am unaware of." The Shadow Broker sounded amused. "It has been known to happen."

That floored him. It was the first he'd heard anything about Ezmay's family; she simply didn't talk about anyone other than her mother. The elder Shepard was in command of the _Orizaba_.

"I'll talk to her." Garrus said haltingly. Oh, he certainly would.

"Excellent! Let me just sift through what assignments I need done and I'll contact you in a couple of days. I look forward to speaking with you again, Officer Vakarian."

With that, the hologram went dark, disappeared into nothingness. The display on the conference table confirmed the connection had been cut. Garrus looked up at Ezmay. The blush was still hot in her cheeks. She was feeling sheepish and embarrassed; the emotions were twisting in his own gut.

"Investments?" He asked her.

"They're tied up on my father's side of the family. I can't access the funds until I produce children." A rueful grin crossed her face and died. "Father didn't have to join the military. He did it because he wanted a life in space, rather than in an office. My grandparents are silent partners in commercial shipping."

"Which shipper?"

"They used to work with Merida Industries before they went broke. After that, they took a contract with a Chinese affiliate." Ezmay looked up at Garrus, who was no longer feeling quite so irate. "My family's rich, I just can't access any of it. I'm the poor relation. The child of the child who refused to continue the shipping dynasty. If I ever choose to come back to the fold and give them great-grandchildren, I can live like a queen. A bored queen who'll probably be dead at the hands of the Reapers, but a queen nonetheless."

"I don't really see us having children." He told her. No joke. Modern technology was not up to bypassing the barriers upheld by incompatible DNA.

"I don't either."

Garrus moved around the conference table, to where Ezmay was staring at her hands. She was still ashamed, looked up in surprise when he laced his talons through her fingers.

"I'm not mad." He said.

"I'm glad for that. Not anything I could do about it." She smirked. "At least you'll get to see what the family home looks like."

"Is…your family going to be there?"

"No. My grandparents are usually on Earth this time of year."

Ezmay gave a short laugh when she felt the relief flood through him.

"Don't worry. They can't get anymore scandalized than they already are."

Garrus changed the subject, wanted to shift the topic away from those sudden nervous feelings he'd got about meeting her family. Christ…her meeting his father was going to be enough of a trial if they ever actually got around to stopping by Palaven.

"Looks like our plan worked." He said.

"So it did." Ezmay's head bobbed. She tugged at him, towards the door. "Come on. I can't think on an empty stomach. We've got a lot more planning to do."

"Right behind you." She had a point. His belly had started rumbling during the conversation with the Shadow Broker, and damned if it wasn't embarrassing as all hell.


	6. Chapter 6

The SR2 made it to Elysium several crew members shy. Samara had left at Omega. Ezmay had to admit that she was sorry to see the serene justicar leave. There was something about the asari that calmed her and lent a zen-like atmosphere to the observation deck. But at least she knew that Samara would be back. Grunt had mentioned wanting to make good on his breeding requests and Zaeed had not wanted to get involved in anything that had to do with the Shadow Broker. It was just as well, Ezmay thought. The crew wasn't permanently gone. Samara and Zaeed had made sure she knew that their help was hers once the Reapers reappeared. Grunt had every intention of returning after siring a child or two. For now, it was simply less people for her to have to worry about on Elysium.

Garrus was conspicuously silent as they left the Normandy. His eyes flicked this way and that. This part of Elysium was still sparsely populated farmland. The airspace was free enough that they could land a ship of the Normandy's size without having to worry about atmospheric conditions. Plus, her grandparents owned the airfield, which helped. Was he staring because it was so much green, almost too much of the colour in one place? She dipped down into that well of feeling inside her gut, the one that had magically appeared after her time in the hospital in Nos Astra. Ezmay didn't think she'd ever understand how it was that she could actually sense what he was feeling. It was like something from a cheesy teen novel; but damned it wasn't handy as all get-out. Less mixup in communications. Less guesswork. He was feeling trepidation. Garrus Vakarian was nervous again. Imagine that.

She hooked a finger in the ammo pouch on his thigh plate and he turned those blue eyes on her. Yeah. She could see it in the set of his mandibles now. The tension contained and barely suppressed.

"Hey. You alright?" She asked.

"Are we going to have any trouble here?"

Ezmay shook her head, brushing the shiny, dark strands out of her face.

"Shouldn't. There's usually so many ships coming and going. They're not going to notice the Normandy. Besides…this strip is family-owned. No one else has any reason to be here."

Garrus turned his head away once more, surveying the tree line. She could see him finding sniper pits and vantage points, could imagine him finding all sorts of places for unseen enemies to hide. Ezmay sighed, and gestured to the huge house with a nod of her head. Miranda came up beside her. The loyalist had been quiet and contrite ever since their discussion in the comm room. Now she had a little bit of her old swagger back. She paused and propped a hand on her hip.

"This is the old digs, Commander?"

"Yes. Let the crew know that they're welcome to stay in whatever rooms they like while we're here. Tell them not to stray too far off the grounds. I don't want anyone hassling them in town. Anything they need can be found here." Ezmay glanced down at her omni-tool. "I've got provisions on the way up."

Miranda moved off to where the crew was off-loading supplies. The wind lifted her hair out of the way as she stepped close to Jacob and Councilor Anderson appeared walking out of the cargo bay.

"Just a moment." Ezmay's eyes narrowed and she strode away from Garrus.

"How long am I to be your hostage?" The Councilor asked Ezmay as she approached him.

"You're free to go whenever you want. If you want to go, I'll have someone take you to the nearest spaceport in the shuttle." She folded her arms and looked at him.

For a moment, the pose and look on Anderson's face was so similar to Garrus's that she had to glance over her shoulder at Garrus to verify the likeness. For a moment she got lost. The turian was staring at her. Standing there, with the green as a backdrop to his black and blue armour, he looked so _godamn _dangerous. He was alert and vigilant. She saw his eyes take in the line of her body. Felt the curl of lust in her belly that signaled his desire for her. The wind whipped black strands around her cheeks and eyes. Anderson's voice yanked her back to the present. She turned her face back, picking the hair out of her face with her fingertips.

"What if I wanted to stay?"

Ezmay stared at him. He couldn't be serious. What was the bunk he had fed her before, when she'd first come to the Citadel after her death? That he was too old and that the young kids should be the one doing the fighting?

"I don't think that would be a good idea." She didn't smile at him. If he thought that she was going to forget about him hiding Council stuff from her, he was dead wrong. "It would be a logistical nightmare, trying to protect a member of the Council during the kind of work we're about to be doing."

"Just let me stay until you find out what the Shadow Broker wants. Then you can 'release' me."

Ezmay clucked her tongue, making a disgusted sound underneath her breath. As she turned towards the house, Anderson moved with her. He spoke as they walked.

"Look, I just want to make sure that things….are fixed.."

"You want it all to go back to the way it was." She said flatly.

"I made a mistake."

"Let me explain something to you." Ezmay's boots crunched on the gravel as she stopped and faced him. "You see that turian over there? I care about him. I _love_ him. And Velarn wants to treat me like I'm some sexual deviant preying on impressionable young turians. You let him. Which shocked the shit out of me, since you're one of the few people that I'd consider taking a bullet for. That _hurt_, Councilor."

"I'm sorry, Shepard." Anderson bent his head. "Really, I am."

Ezmay considered him for a moment. She honestly didn't know how she wanted things to end with him. She wanted to forgive the old man; he'd been like a father, like a big brother. More of a father than her biological dad was. There was the crux of it. She was still too mad about being thrown at the mercy of Velarn and the rest of the Council. Maybe she was more mad about that.

She shook her head.

"Listen, just give me some space, ok? You can stay until we find out what the Shadow Broker wants from us."

The old black man sagged. A smile ghosted over his mouth.

"Go on." She said. Forced some gentleness into her tone. "Go get settled in the house."

Ezmay got lost in thought as she watched Anderson walk off. Too many things on her mind right now. A breath shuddered into her lungs as she switched her focus to the house in the foreground. It rose imposing against the blinding blue sky of Elysium. Really, the damn thing was too grandiose. She should have persuaded her grandmother to sell the place long ago. Her grandparents spent most of their time on Earth, and god knows she didn't need the house when she spent so much time in space. For now, it would serve her purpose.

* * *

About the only thing that Garrus liked about the house was the fact that the ceilings were high enough that he didn't have to worry about bumping his head on doorways and such. Elysium was one of the older human colonies. The houses were older and he could tell this home was one of the first built. It was sprawling and entirely too open for his tastes. There were too damn many windows. He squinted, peering out the viewing window in the dining area. The world was dark outside. Night had settled in; he couldn't see the tree line. It made him nervous. This was a sniper's paradise, all open and well-lit and affording so many valuable angles. His talons curled at his thigh.

Garrus turned his thoughts to Ezmay and felt her waves of nostalgia. She was somewhere in the house, somewhere touching base with something that was bringing back memories. He took a breath in through his nose and smelled roses and nutmeg. That peculiar scent of Ezmay's was all around this massive house. It both disturbed him and relaxed him and left him in weird place where he was keyed up and not all at the same time.

When he'd entered the house, he'd set off to explore, to possibly find Ezmay while he did so. There was a lot he could learn about her in this house. Much he could use to understand some of her more bizarre traits. Here he was bonded to her and mated for life, yet there were still things he didn't understand about her. Also, he didn't like how open the house was. If there was one thing that could settle him down right now, it would be making sure they had a safe exit. Knowing exactly where the major weak points were.

Garrus went from room to room. The architecture was different from most modern houses. Newer conveniences like door panels that opened to the touch and voice-activated controls for lights and kitchen implements had been added post-construction. He could see where clumsy electricians had made installations and patched the plaster once more. He saw that the kitchen was made for an army of servants to serve up sumptuous banquets in the gaudy dining room. The library was crammed with actual paper books; that had been a new one for him. Paper was very rare on Palaven. Most everything for the turians had been digitized since before humans were even testing their ability to fly in space. He couldn't resist taking down a few books and turning the pages gently. The smell of paper and dust was ancient. He couldn't read the writing. Sure, one could work around another species or culture for so long and catch the basics. But he was by no means fluent. Garrus shook his head and put the book back on the shelf. In the hallway, he'd found a ledger on display that showed Ezmay's lineage all the way back over five generations. At least he knew where her swarthy colouring and her fierce temper came from now. Her family came from somewhere around Earth's equatorial belt…some place called Brazil. He tried to roll the syllables over his tongue. Couldn't make the 'B' sound.

Then he'd claimed a room for himself and her. Made himself comfortable on a veranda that gave him an excellent vantage point of the grounds surrounding the house. Somewhere off in the distance, waves crashed against a beach. Garrus could smell water and salt on the air. They weren't far from the coast. For a second, he berated himself for not noticing that as they'd flew in and landed. He'd been too absorbed studying the ring of vegetation that separated the house and grounds from the rest of the village. There he sat, hidden in shadows, observing the general ebb and flow of that little patch of Elysium.

The mind tends to wander when one is in such a peaceful environment. For whatever reason, his thoughts kept going to Palaven and his father. It was eating at him. Eventually, he was going to have to stop in and see his father. Introduce his mate. Take some heat for bonding with a human. Unnatural, it would be called. Sick. Wrong. Garrus bent his forehead to his sniper rifle. It was one thing to work alongside a capable human commander. It was quite another to take one to your bed. During his military training, they'd discussed the Relay 314 Incident. The classes had been sandwiched between classes on enemy anatomy and culture. Humans were squishy, impulsive, reckless. Yet they had military promise after what the turians had encountered on Shanxi, so they were to be shaped and guided as they made their way in the universe. Perhaps one day humanity could become a client race. Of course, they'd discussed xenophilia. Another cadet had likened Shanxi turians, as they were called, to lovers of bestiality. One might as well lie with vorcha or varren. He'd laughed along with the rest of them.

Hours passed. Garrus began to doze, his head dipping back to rest against the exterior of the house. His fringe brushed against the cowl of his armor. It felt so nice to nap and let himself slip into dreamland with the cool air dancing over his plates. Palaven was hot; this was refreshing. Still…there was nothing like a warm Palaven night. One of these days, he wanted to take her to the southern regions of Palaven and cover her in the tropical flowers that grew there. The thought made his chin and mandibles shiver with delight.

Then the click of the door snapped him back into wakefulness. Movement came from the room. He craned his neck to peer inside the illuminated window. Ezmay stood undoing her shirt. The rumpled tunic was discarded on top of a datapad that she'd carelessly tossed on the bed. Even from where Garrus sat, he could see the line of stress that ran through her. It was mirrored in his own body. The days of their honeymoon were very far away. Even though it had only been a couple weeks since they'd lain luxuriating in the sand and surf, it had still been too long. How in the world had he gotten this woman to bond herself to him? Moonlight glinted off of the metal on his talon. He tapped the ring against the butt of his sniper rifle. Forgotten it was there…it was a part of him. It was a curious thing to find yourself so enamoured with a person that you never wished to leave their side. Horny teenagers and breathless girls could imagine being carried away to happily-ever-after, but to find that one person….to find your teammate, your partner. Garrus shook his head. Almost laughed at himself. To find his mate outside of his own species…. Huh. Maybe Shanxi's sexual deviants had been on to something after all.

His rifle went abandoned, leaned against the exterior. Garrus crept to the doorway of the balcony. He waited there in the darkness until Ezmay was bending to undo the pressure clasps on her boots. For a split second, he was concerned that her instincts were so rusty. That she put her back to a door and didn't bother to check it. Then he pounced.

She shrieked when the talons clenched around her hips and lifted. There was just enough time to register the look of amusement flaring opening Garrus's mandibles before she faceplanted on the bed.

She'd often told him that life was a cotillion, that one had to roll the dice, to gamble, to waltz with whatever partner Fate put on your dance card. Garrus loved that she knew the difference between foreplay and an invitation to spar. He'd been about to launch himself at her when she rolled off the bed and dropped to her feet beside the mattress. Sometimes, sex just didn't cut it for stress relief. Sometimes, one needed to throw stuff around and get violent. From the glint in Ezmay's eyes and the flash of white teeth, Garrus suspected that she needed to beat the hell out of something almost as badly as he did.

He lunged at her and managed only to end up with a handful of black hair. Though he could yank on her hair and jerk her head this way and that, he had no real option here because the only logical move was to yank until her neck cracked. So he let her drop to her back, tugging him along, and bracing her feet on his chest. Garrus went flying end over end and thudded against the wall. Quick as a cat, Ezmay was perched on him. She pressed her forearm down over his throat.

A purr started low in his throat. Talons slid up over her legs, and squeezed Ezmay's rear through the rough fabric of her trousers. Maybe….maybe traditional tension release would do it after all… He began to rethink the sparring.

"No way." She kicked her feet, neatly pinning his wrists to the floor. "You started this.."

It left her vulnerable, all her weight off-balance like that. It was simple enough to flip her over, flip her onto her back. Her breath went out in a great puff. Now he had the advantage. He weighed more and was longer limbed. Their sparring session was brief. Garrus couldn't resist snapping the elastic strap of her bra that went up over her shoulder. Ezmay's lips twisted into a grin.

"Why're you so feisty all of a sudden?"

"There's something dirty about doing this here in your family home." He leaned close, letting her see the sharp teeth and the voracious gleam in his eye. Goosebumps raised on her skin.

"Thought you wanted to fight."

"I still do." He squeezed at her waist, scratched her with his claws. "Definitely."

He had the weight advantage and the long limbs, but she had the strong legs, heavily muscled from years of conditioning and running. A short human calf twisted around and caught him just in the groin. Ezmay's teeth flashed at him once more, and she rammed her shinbone as hard as she could into that armoured codpiece that protected his more…sensitive regions. It was times like this that made him very, very glad that he was not a human. Nor a krogan, no. No outer genitalia that was delicate and fragile and exposed to threat. She caught his armour, bruised her shin, and Garrus smiled at her.

He leaned down and nipped at her collar bone. Relished the sight of her chest heaving, of her ribcage fluttering in and out of view beneath her flesh as she breathed.

In the early days, turians had been taught that a delicate point on the human body was just at the top of the abdomen. Two well-placed and forceful claws could rip through the sternum and diaphragm and shred a human heart. Though he would never dream of hurting her, he placed his claws there now. Laid the sharp, dark nails against the flesh that was just exposed by the cross-piece of her bra and caressed the skin with his thumbpad. Ezmay's entire body was so fragile. Bones were broken easier, flesh rended, tissue damaged. She didn't have the natural protection that he did.

Garrus brought his nose up under her earlobe and inhaled. Mmm…warm…spicy.

She shuddered underneath him; he could see her nipples pebbling under the thin fabric of her bra.

"Are we fighting or fucking?" She asked him.

"Take your pick."

Her arms were up, on the cowl of his armour, soft tanned flesh pressed against the hardened blue ceramic. The contrast between fragility and invulnerability made Garrus's plates shift away.

"Take me to bed." Ezmay whispered.

Now he was the one to shudder.

* * *

Honestly, he'd slept for shit. It wasn't because of the sex. Plunging himself into Ezmay over and over again left him feeling wiped out, but content. And God knows there was something driving the two of them last night. They'd clung to each other and done all sorts of things that surely made Ezmay's ancestors blush here in this big, empty house. Pervert that he was, he couldn't stop touching her. And the little tease that she was, no sooner had he fallen exhausted in the sheets, then her hands were searching and exploring and stirring up another wave of desire. They'd sparred briefly, but it hadn't been the fighting that had managed to drive the stress out of them.

But holy hell, how hard it was to sleep when one couldn't simply turn off the lights and be enclosed in the total darkness of space. Usually the only light was from Ezmay's fish tank and whatever stars passed overhead. He wasn't used to the grey pre-dawn light filtering in the windows and the brilliant flowering of sunlight warming the surface of Elysium. For a second, as he'd groggily blinked through a haze of sleep and dreams, he'd thought he was back in his old barracks on Palaven. Been confused why there had been no general call to wake before dawn. Then Ezmay had shifted in her sleep and her arms had curled over his waist. He'd groaned at the brush of intense pleasure, found himself snapped back into his body with a wave of remembrance, and lost all interest in the morning.

Now here he was, rubbing his eyes and wondering if she'd be pissed if he left her to the call with the Shadow Broker and went to sleep for a couple more hours.

"…very happy to let you know that the Broker has an assignment that requires just your level of expertise and creativity."

Creativity, huh? The odd word choice woke him up a little.

"There's quite a delicate package changing hands in the Andromeda sector. We'll forward you the coordinates. Use of deadly force.." The agent demurred, smiled coyly. Garrus wanted to smack him. "..well, that's entirely up to you. Just be careful. You're moving something large, and extremely fragile."

"What the fuck? We're movers now? I thought the Broker only traded in information." Ezmay was belligerent, but that only seemed to amuse the agent.

"Nothing's ever what it seems, is it? Suffice it to say that we don't deal with some of the nastier things that Zael Hollinth did, but the truth of the matter is that people are willing to pay for things they want. It would just be poor business to turn customers away if one can provide."

"Fine, anyway.. Where are we dropping this package off?" Garrus interrupted.

"We'll come meet you. Just find a location that you feel affords us a degree of privacy, and contact me at this code. I'll arrange a pick up."

"Anything else we should know?" Ezmay asked.

"There might be some batarians involved in this." The agent said helpfully. "I'd take care if I were you."

The connection was cut. Ezmay stared at the screen, chewing her lip. At length she turned to Garrus.

"My god, he's a smarmy asshole, isn't he?"

"Always a pleasure to work with." Garrus agreed. "At least he forwarded over specs on the ship we're going to board."

Ezmay looked at the layout, turning the schematic this way and that to familiarize herself with the ins and outs of the ship.

"You realize this makes us pirates, don't you?" She said softly.

"We don't have to be the kind of pirates you're thinking of. Besides, this is Council-sanctioned piracy."

"Didn't think it'd be like this when I got to this age."

"We never end up where we think we should." Garrus patted Ezmay's ass. She swiped at him playfully and then her eyes turned sad.

"I don't want to have to kill anyone who doesn't need killing."

His claw hooked her belt and he pulled her close.

"We won't. Only necessary killing. I'll make sure to tell Jack that too."

Her face turned grim. Grunt and Zaeed were the obvious first choices for boarding a ship. Grunt was impressive and scary, and Zaeed had been in the galaxy long enough to have seen every trick in the book. But Jack came in as a sharp contender, since the tattooed biotic had done hostile boardings before. Garrus watched Ezmay's face and could have told anyone standing nearby what she was thinking.

_How did I fall so low?_ This was not what either of them had in mind for a career path. Going covert ops was fine and dandy. But this had the stink of something off all over it.

"Okay…" She breathed. "Let's do this. Get a boarding party together. No unnecessary bloodshed."

* * *

Miranda and Mordin had been left in charge of the Normandy with a skeleton crew. With the absence of the Samara, Grunt, and Zaeed, and Thane spending an increasing amount of time in meditation and bedrest, they were a few people short. Each person had their own boarding party of five people. Ezmay looked around at her squads as Jack spoke. She figured it was best to let the experience pirate give the tips around here. Besides, Jack was in fine form, lecturing with a glitter in her eye, her hands gesturing wildly and waving the shotgun around, as well as the periodic biotic flare when her adrenaline got up. She even had a black bandanna tied over her bald head that had the old traditional Jolly Roger on it. Ezmay had to restrain the grin; hell…when one goes to the prom, one dresses up, right?

"Alright, fuckers, here's the deal. No one knows a ship better than the people who live on it every day. Except maybe the designers or the engineers and I don't see them here. What I see is a bunch of assholes who've never gotten up close and personal with people who're pretty godamn sure they're about to die." Jack was pacing, and when Ezmay looked over at Garrus, there was an smile on his face. He was just as amused by this as Ezmay was. "Captain says no unnecessary killing. You military types may think that's bullshit."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ezmay saw Jacob exchange a glance with one of the security crew.

"Actually, it may be one of the smartest godamn things you've ever heard come out of her mouth. People are more likely to surrender, and make this whole job easier, if they think that surrendering's going to keep them from getting killed. People who have nothing to lose fight like there's nothing to lose. Now since our Captain here…" Jack gestured to Ezmay. "..Has not established her reputation as a blood-drinking, puppy-kicking she-bitch of a pirate, we're probably going to meet some resistance. There will be booby-traps, there will be people dropping out of the ceiling or popping up out of the floor. There will be situations where you think you've got hostages and then one of them decides he's a hero."

Ezmay cut in. This was probably a good thing because Jack showed no sign of stopping her tirade.

"Try to keep it to wounding and maiming." Her voice was less frantic than Jack's. "Restraints, unconsciousness, that sort of thing. We're not a bunch of scumbags here. Let's not act like it."

From here they waited. They'd fired a few times; disabled the ship's drives. When Joker got them within range, they'd drop their environmental masks and the temporary bulkhead would be shunted over to create a fragile, airtight, air-filled tunnel between the two cargo bays. From there, they'd take the main cargo bay. Jack had happily volunteered to make her way all the way up to the other ship's CIC and take charge of the vessel. While she did this, the other crews would sweep out and take the remaining decks. While they planned, Ezmay had caught herself thanking whatever Gods were around to hear that the prize ship only had a couple of decks. They were stretched thin as it was.

There was a shriek of metal as EDI calculated and extended the temporary bulkhead. Jack racked a round into her shotgun. She looked over at Ezmay, who looked calmly back at the biotic. An evil grin spread across the convict's face.

"We haven't discussed shares yet, Captain."

Ezmay was almost positive that Jack was just baiting her. The girl had hooted with delight when she'd heard about the mission and had insisted on calling Ezmay captain rather than commander.

"This isn't piracy, Jack. There are no shares."

"Call it what you want. We're boarding a ship and taking cargo. Far as I know, you don't have a letter of marque. That's piracy."

"One boarding does not a pirate make." She had to fight from bristling even as Jack started laughing.

"You know, if you're going to establish a reputation, you need a name." Jack's eyes darted towards the cargo bay door. The noises on the other side….well…if Ezmay had ever wondered what robots having sex sounded like, now she had a good idea. "You know, like the Spaniard, or Calico Shepard, or something."

"Her family's from Brazil." Garrus's voice whipped Ezmay's head around. She leveled a glare at him.

"Garrus, don't encourage her!"

"There was a pirate named Roche Braziliano way back in ancient times." Jack nodded, smiling in satisfaction. "Yeah. That's nice. I'm calling you The Braziliana from now on."

"Don't you dare." Ezmay said. Outside the cargo door, the latches sealed. They all heard the heavy rush and hiss of the tunnel airing up.

"Like you can stop me." Jack grinned, and turned, hefting the shotgun. "Archangel and The Braziliana. Got a ring to it."

The evo masks went on, and people began to move out. Ezmay glanced at Garrus through the shade of her Death Mask.

"Nice. Way to get her started." She tried to make her voice sound accusatory. Didn't really work.

One could nearly hear adrenaline dumping into veins and arteries as Jacob came forward to open the airlock of the prize ship. Ice had built up over the handle and keypanel from months in space. Garrus focused on the little silver chips as they floated through zero-g over their heads. Thank gods for magnetic boots.

"Positions, people." Ezmay said. She was in Commander mode now. Even Jack nodded and fell to the side. They all hugged the walls, trying to make smaller targets of themselves. EDI told them that most of the other ship's lifesigns were in the cargo bay. "Let's get ready for the welcome party."

Tali finished fiddling with the keypanel, and nodded at Jacob, who hefted and twisted the manual lock. Air popped and rushed when the door swung open. The airlock was silent. Ezmay jerked her head at Jack.

"Concussion grenades out." The biotic and three other crewmen tossed, nearly in unison. Two seconds, a short cry from inside the cargo bay, and the explosions made both ships shudder.

Ezmay's people flooded in.

It was a brief, violent struggle to take the cargo hold. It wasn't entirely bloodless, but no one died that she could tell. Within twenty or thirty minutes, they had everyone rounded up and bound with two of the crewmen at guard.

Privately, Garrus had told Ezmay that the captain traditionally takes the CIC with her own party, but she'd insisted on remaining in the cargo bay so they could search for the Shadow Broker's package. If it was really as precious as the Broker made it out to be, she wanted to personally oversee it. So Ezmay looked at Jack, and waved the biotic on. Anyhow, if Jack failed to take the ship, they might be able to make off with the Broker's package before the prize ship was able to reclaim the cargo bay.

Jack was all business as she moved off. Ezmay could swear, though, that she heard a shriek of 'For the Braziliana!' before the doors shut behind her.

"Holy hell." Ezmay swore.

The prisoners were batarians all. They knelt with their hands laced behind their hands. She noted grimly that they were all dirty, and had the sallow olive colour of having not eaten in a while. They flinched away as she swung her glance over them. Might have been the Death Mask, might have been all the guns.

Armoured footsteps were the only sound, aside from whimpering and grunt of pain. It was a tense half-hour while they waited for Jack to take the ship. There was enough time for Tali to notice and complain about an odor. It was heavy. Musky. When Tali mentioned it, suddenly it became the only thing they could smell. Now that the smell of the concussion grenades was dying, it was all around them. Off in the darkness of the cargo bay, there was a grind of a metal container being opened.

"What the fuck is that stench?" Ezmay said more to herself than anyone. Godamn, was it the batarian crew? It was coming in through her breather since she wasn't running off of her suit. It was almost unbearable.

"Uh…Ezmay..?" Garrus called out.

He said her first name, where he would have usually called her commander, which was her first clue that something was wrong. Her shotgun flipped up and rested on her shoulder as she moved off in the direction of his voice. It wasn't lost on her that several of the batarians began eyeing one another.

She found Garrus back in the far corner of the cargo bay. There was a slight breeze here and it was a little warmer than the rest of the bay. Ezmay found her turian staring blankly into the open container. His sniper rifle had sagged until the edge of the barrel was leaning on the floor. When he heard her round the corner, he looked at her and shook his head.

"What?" She asked. What could have possibly found that put him in such a blank, helpless state?

When she got to him, she swung around to peer into the container and felt herself come up short. There were literally no words she could summon to mind. Surprise. She felt as thrown off-balance as Garrus was acting. They simply stood there, staring into the crate, completely at a loss for words.

The horse stared back at them. Large brown eyes rimmed with obscenely long lashes blinked, glanced around nervously. It chuffed air out of its nostrils. At least they could narrow down the source of the odor that was sickening them all.

A horse. The Shadow Broker sent them to steal a fucking horse.

Ezmay turned, glancing to where the crew was pacing, and then her eyes strayed back to Garrus. He shrugged at her, a heavy wave of blue ceramic. His chest was heaving in short, sharp hitches. If he was laughing, she was going to kill him.

"Godammit." She said.


	7. Chapter 7

Ezmay wasn't a horse expert, but she knew that no animal should be kept chained in a shipping container steeped in its own filth. After the initial shock wore off, and she'd smacked Garrus on the shoulder for laughing, she'd sidled closer and saw that the horse was being kept in deplorable conditions. It was covered, literally_ covered_, in its own leavings. Someone had jury-rigged a water dispenser on the side of the shipping container. A forlorn bag of oats hung on a hook near the water bottle. The horse seemed nervous and sad, and skittered away from her when she approached it. It didn't help that Jack hadn't reported in yet. The poor creature had to be smelling her apprehension and anger. At last she managed to lay a hand on the wide expanse of forehead and stroked the fur. She knew that she was getting horseshit all over her boots and gloves, but if they were going to get this damned big animal off the batarian freighter and on the Normandy, it was going to have to trust her at least a little bit. When Garrus moved towards her, the horse scented him, and screamed.

"Stand back!" She put a hand out towards her turian. "It's scared of you."

"It's probably scared of everything right about now." The amusement still hadn't faded out of his voice. She peered at him, to see if he was joking. Couldn't see through the black visor on his helmet.

"It's a good thing we didn't come in firing off armour-piercing rounds." She said. "We'd be moving horse-steak instead."

Garrus snickered behind his breather. She had to resist the urge to smack him again.

"Go find out what's taking Jack so long." Ezmay went back to stroking the horse's muzzle again. The calmer this beast was, the better.

When Garrus was gone, she turned to focus on the animal. Didn't look wounded, so they were off to a good start. Given that there was only one bag of oats hanging around, it didn't look particularly malnourished either. For a second she wondered if the Shadow Broker was dicking her around. Was this some kind of joke? It really was a magnificent animal though, underneath all that horse crap. It wasn't as big as she expected.

A thick chain was looped around the horse's neck, and secured to the wall of the container. She undid the chain, and took it in her hands. Gave it a gentle tug. The horse's eyes widen and it backed away against the movement.

Christ, this was going to be a mess. She could sense it already. The family had owned horses way back in the day, but she'd never handled or ridden one herself. Ezmay'd had that horse phase that all little girls seemed to go through. It was pretty damn hard to find Black Beauty on a military ship though. Her childhood dreams of sailing away on a unicorn had faded when she'd discovered boys.

Ezmay sucked in a deep breath, and tried to find a bit of calm. Samara had taught her some handy meditation tricks. Center and focus. The feel of air flowing in through her nose and mouth. The cooling of her throat and mucous membranes as it rushed in. Expand the belly, pull in the air and satiate the lungs. Unconsciously, she sidled closer to the horse while she did it. The body can't maintain a state of heightened physiological arousal for more than fifteen minutes or so in the absence of a stressor. Once the parasympathetic nervous system kicked in, the mind would start to calm down as well.

She found herself leaning into the horse's side, stroking the neck and ears. Murmuring little horsey lullabies. As her tension faded, so did the electric energy in the mountain of muscle beside her. Gently, she eased the horse out of the shipping crate. Better to walk it around where it would never see the batarians or the hallways. Straight to the hatch. In the privacy of her Death Mask, she was grinning like an idiot.

The clip-clop of hooves sounded so damned loud in the cargo bay. It nearly startled her when Garrus's voice crackled into her helmet. Took all of her will to keep from jumping. The breathing probably helped.

"Just ease him into the tunnel. You're doing fine."

She dare not look back over her shoulder. There was a sort of zen thing going on with this horse and she dare not break the zone that she had him in. Over the intercom, she heard her voice reverberate with a sort of gentle, breathy tone. Didn't want to spook the horse by speaking too loudly.

"You're watching me, huh?"

"Yeah. Jack's reported in. Everything's going smooth as silk." There was silence on the other end of the intercom for an instant. "You are definitely taking a shower before bed."

"Asshole." Not the snappiest comeback she'd ever thought up.

They stepped over the threshold. She could feel the shift in gravity between the two ships, and she knew the horse could too. It chuffed worriedly beside her. By the time she managed to get it through the tunnel and into the Normandy's cargo bay, her back was soaked in sweat. A trickle of perspiration had started between her breasts and over her stomach. She hadn't realized that she was still so tense. A quick touch to her ear and she had control of the comm.

"Miranda, do you have any experience with horses?"

Miranda, who was minding the Normandy, sounded unsure over the radio. She might have thought that Ezmay was fucking with her. Making fun of her, maybe? The spoiled rich girl. Of course she'd have legions of horses.

"Uh, some. Why? Are you telling me a joke?"

"Get your boots on and come down the cargo bay. I can't babysit this pony all day long."

"There's a horse in the cargo bay?" Miranda's voice was shocked. For once, Ezmay couldn't contain her laugher.

"Yeah. Poor baby's filthy. Since you're the only one who's had practice with these things before, you are the official horsemaster."

There was a muffled curse on the other end of the radio that brought a smile to her face. The look on Miranda's face was even better. Ezmay gratefully handed off the chain and moved back to the tunnel. Since they had the batarian ship, she wanted answers. Curiosity had gotten the better of her around the time she'd managed to ease the horse out of its crate. What the heck did the Shadow Broker want with a horse?

On the other side, she keyed up Jack.

"You've got the captain?"

"Aye, Madame La Braziliana." Jack sounded cheerfully psychotic.

"Enough with the Braziliana crap. Could you bring everyone down to the cargo hold?"

Ezmay's eyes went to Garrus when she finished. He surveyed her up and down.

"You smell like a latrine." He said helpfully.

"Careful. You're dangerously close to moving back to the forward battery." She didn't mean it, and he knew it. His laughter died down right around the time that the boarding parties and their prisoners began to straggle into the cargo bay.

Jack kicked a crate close and posed with one leg propped on top. She looked inordinately pleased with herself.

"If this is what Jack considers fun, I'm really curious what she thinks is relaxing." Garrus murmured.

"Avast! Cower in fear before the Braziliana, and her mate, the Archangel." Jack brandished her shotgun at a sickly orange batarian. She nudged him forward, and nodded to Ezmay. "This the one you wanted."

If the batarian captain looked freaked out, it was for good reason. The muzzle of Jack's shotgun was still buried in his lower back.

"Captain, I'd like to know why you have a horse onboard." No point in beating around the bush, right? She was betting it was stolen, worth quite a bit of money.

"I…I can't say…" The poor bastard was obviously terrified.

"You'd better say." She strode closer, inspecting him. He had the same starved look as the rest of his crew, and a hint of desperation in his eyes. "I don't want to have to hurt anyone."

The captain looked like he was trying to muster up the courage to refuse her again, but something inside him broke.

"I'll tell you if you'll provide rations for my crew."

She could almost feel the burn of Garrus's eyes on her. They'd exchanged a knowing look when they'd managed to take the cargo hold. Everyone in this batarian's crew was starving, even the captain. Stealing the horse was probably going to leave them in a pretty bad position. But she couldn't help pitying them. They had enough rations on board the Normandy; no one should have to starve to death.

"You're an honourable captain, looking after your crew. I agree to this deal." No harm in putting on a little show. She was a pirate now, after all. "Start talking."

"How can I be sure you'll give us food?" The batarian was wary now, eyeing her.

"You don't have much choice, do you?" She arched her brow.

It didn't take much to break his will. The captain sagged.

"We were transporting it. We hit a human ship. Some rich guy. He was taking it from Earth to one of the colonies. We were supposed to get paid on delivery."

"Who's paying you?"

"Some turian. It was shady. I think he's got some kind of grudge against the human."

"You don't know any names?" Ezmay asked.

"The human was named Rodrick. I think his last name was Kinsey. I don't know the turian. It was an agent that contacted us."

"Why did he want the horse?"

"I don't know. Probably just to piss him off. I don't know anything about those animals besides that they stink."

Ezmay examined the cargo bay. There were crates, boxes, but no rations.

"What happened to all your food?"

"We took some damage when we stole the animal. All of our rations were stored in a smaller cargo hatch. We had fires, damage to the hull. We had to vent that bay to save the ship."

And so they'd lost everything. Probably rationed out what they had left before they ran out. They'd been gambling that they could reach port and receive payment before they starved to death.

"Garrus, take some men and bring them a couple crates. We can spare it."

There was a rush of pride in her stomach. He approved. She could almost hear what he was thinking….that this was the Shepard that he'd followed into the Collector nest, that inspired such fierce loyalty.

"When do we get to loot the ship?" Jack was bouncing irritably on her heels.

"No looting, Jack." She knew how batarians were. They were inclusive to a fault and reckless. She wouldn't be surprised if the ship went through a change of management after they left. The crates of rations might spare the batarian captain's life at the hands of his crew, but he damn sure wasn't going to be in charge afterwards. Looting would only worsen things.

From the set of Jack's jawline, Ezmay knew that the trip to meet the Shadow Broker's agent was going to be a long one. They'd uncoupled themselves from the batarian ship and made their way out of the Andromeda sector with little fanfare. Jack, as predicted, had pitched a fit once they were all aboard the Normandy once again. Ezmay had stared her down, sending the biotic back down to her hidey-hole under engineering in a funk. She had no illusions about Jack's loyalty to the Normandy and her commander; it wouldn't have shocked her if the biotic chose to jump ship. At this point, Ezmay was too drained to care. She showered and then headed down to see how Miranda was doing with the precious cargo.

It was going to take ages to get the smell of horse crap out of the bay. When Ezmay checked in, she found Miranda smoothing a brush over the horse's glossy coat. It had been a gratuitous use of precious water, but the animal deserved better than to be covered in its own droppings. The stallion- Ezmay could see that it was a male horse now- chuffed and tossed its mane imperiously when he scented Ezmay. Miranda looked up to her.

"How's our boy, here?" The commander gestured to the horse. Miranda's black-gloved fingers patted at the downy-soft forehead.

"I daresay he's in a better mood now that he's clean. I fed him. By the way, we'll be short on fresh vegetables until the hydroponics replenish." Miranda rubbed the back of her hand across her grimy cheek.

"What's the deal with him?" Ezmay reached out and laid her own hand on the horse's side. His coat felt soft and silky.

"Probably used for stud services. He's got a good build and he was very well taken care of before the batarians got him. Maybe used for racing, maybe hunting."

"Pretty valuable, huh?"

Miranda dropped the brush on the deck and let the horse roam as he would. His tail lifted and Ezmay winced to see him fouling the deck.

"Yeah. Considering how rare horses are. Even on Earth, only the very rich can afford to keep them. If he was being transported from Earth to a colony, then he was most likely headed for someone's vacation home, or a race, or something." Miranda shot her a look. "He's worth more than you or I would make in a lifetime. Maybe about an eighth or so of what the Illusive Man spent rebuilding you. Good breeding and a good lineage, you know."

"All that seems to matter." Ezmay glanced around the rest of the cargo bay. "Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, Commander."

* * *

An extremely pleased agent greeted Garrus on the comm system. It was the same guy that he'd dealt with before Invictus. The agent had never given him a name to work with, but privately, Garrus had taken to calling him "Vic" after the inhospitable planet that Ezmay had been captive on.

"Officer Vakarian! I'm so pleased to hear from you as always."

Ezmay had been right. He was creepy. Now that Garrus viewed in him in that light, the honey-sweet tone was alarming.

"We have the horse." Garrus told him simply.

"Oh, my. I'm glad to hear that, though I must admit I'd hoped you weren't going to find out what it was you were picking up."

"Couldn't really be helped. Don't worry. No one on board this ship is going to take the damn thing."

"Well, that's a relief. Have you selected coordinates where we can make the exchange?"

"I'm forwarding them over now." Garrus had already forwarded the information over the channel, and he saw Vic nod in satisfaction.

"Yes, nice and private. Now, I must ask you, what are your plans now that your debt is settled?"

In other words, were they going to consider becoming full-time employees? Ezmay had already told Garrus her plans and had given him the go-ahead to make the decision as he saw fit. It would fulfill her council mission to be inserted in the Shadow Broker's network. Didn't mean he had to like it. The thought of working for the information broker left a sour taste in Garrus's mouth. Working for these people went against everything he held dear. The only consolation was that they were going to be taking the bastard down.

"We hadn't considered it yet. Mercenary work is easy to come by."

"Oh, surely operatives of your grade wouldn't feel the need to stoop so low." Vic smiled over the connection at him. "I can vouch, if you're feeling a little hesitation. It's steady work and challenging. The pay is nice. The health insurance is better."

"Not much needing health insurance." What a joke, this verbal sparring was. Garrus gave Vic a coy look.

"As you will. I believe the Broker wished to speak with you personally. Will you hold on just a minute."

"Sure." The turian growled.

This cloak-and-dagger crap really wasn't his cup of tea. Maybe he should have gotten Ezmay down here to deal with this. She had considerably more finesse with these kinds of matters than he did. Or at least a tolerance for it that he couldn't summon. But she'd waved him off and said she needed to run. If the woman didn't pound out at least two or three miles a day she got twitchy and anxious.

The same eagle holograph showed up, the same filtered voice.

"Had you given any more thought to my offer of permanent employment, Garrus?"

The shift from his rank and family name to his given name made him blink.

"Like I said. We haven't reached a decision yet." God, he was starting to sound like Legion.

"If I may be so bold, what are you planning to do now that the Commander's family home is crawling with security people?"

Oh, _hell_. Oh, shit. This he had not known. Anderson hadn't come on board with them when they'd left to go steal the horse. Had the bastard called the Council? There was surely a spectre or two in charge of the investigation. They dare not go back to Elysium. _Try to play it cool_, he told himself.

"Well, that's new." He said, downplaying his shock.

"It's quite a predicament." The Broker said. "If I may offer a proposition?"

"I'm listening." Garrus was wary. Propositions from the Shadow Broker were like propositions from the human mafia- a bad idea. If they weren't on a mission to take down this fucker, he would have told Joker to steer the Normandy off to the Terminus systems.

"I can make all your problems with the Council go away."

_That_ got his attention. So there was a mole in the Council's network? Someone who had a councilor's ear?

"For a price, of course." Garrus said.

"Of course. Everything has its price."

"What are we talking about here?"

"I can settle this for say…two more assignments?"

"So indenture?"

The Broker sounded amused, mock offended. "This is not Indenturetech. You need something, I need a couple of somethings. You're not becoming slaves. Do we have a deal?"

"I don't suppose you'd send over a contract?"

"If it would make you feel better, I'm sure we can cobble something together." Now the Broker sounded positively tickled.

It was better than nothing. At least it would help him get an idea of what to expect when he got further into the Broker's business.

"Yes, please." He said.

"Very well. I'll have someone send you a contract. I'd recommend you stay away from Elysium for a few days. I look forward to working with you, Officer Vakarian."


	8. Chapter 8

Garrus was aware of was the sun beating down on his face, the conspicuous absence of his visor. Then he slowly came to, slowly became aware of more. Sand in his mouth, the ache of throat that had become too dry. Pains in his body. His talons hurt; they burned in a way that jolted him through the fog of unconsciousness and back into the land of the living. The rush of wind came roaring through him. After being lost in that blackness where sound has no meaning, the howling was unbearable. He cracked his eyes open and almost immediately regretted it.

It was too bright, far too bright. He slammed his eyes shut, tears rolling down over his mandibles almost immediately. Garrus blinked, tried to force his eyes to stay open. The dazzling of the sun began to fade into something more tolerable. He groaned, confused. He didn't know what was going on. He tested his memory, and found large gaps of it missing. He knew his name, knew where he was from, knew general things about the universe. The Citadel, Council space, Terminus systems. What really scared the shit out of him was how very much was _gone._ He poked himself inwardly, and had no memory. What was the last thing? He struggled. The last thing…

The last thing was…taking his oath at C-Sec. So he was C-Sec? That felt wrong.

He curled his legs, rolling in the sand, and forced himself upright. Where was he? The sun and sand told him Palaven. The familiar scent of landscape baking at too high a wavelength. He was almost sure it was Palaven. He consulted his faulty memory banks and found nothing that could tell him why he'd be in the desert on Palaven. Garrus looked and found sand dunes as far as the eye could see. He lay nearby a scant military shelter. A pavilion with shimmery heat-reflective material stretched out. A table, a few chairs, instruments half-buried in the sand. He stumbled, reached down to pick up a busted datapad. Sand poured out of the crystal screen and he dropped it in disinterest as he turned.

A sound caught his attention, and turned him to face the setting sun. A black figure was stirring twenty feet or so from the camp- _camp? Maybe outpost?_ His legs were still unsteady. The shimmer of metal called to him. A canteen!

He wrenched it open and drank gratefully. The water was hot, but it soothed him. He felt clearer-headed. Garrus recapped it and laid it on the table where he could find it again.

Another sound came from the black figure. Coughing. Another turian? The figure was too small to be turian. He scrambled over the dunes to where the figure was stretched out. It was a human.

Christ…the sun had really done a number on the human's skin. First glance told him it was female, and then another sensation overwhelmed him. The fierce, terrible urge to protect, to possess. He fell to his knees beside the little human female and threw himself to where his body created shade on her face. She was red, dried out. He watched as she tried to speak. Her lips were wind-chapped and cracked. Before he knew it, he was up and carrying the human to the shade created by the outpost's pavilion. There was precious little water in the canteen, but he put it to her lips. She drank.

When she'd had enough, she lapsed back into unconsciousness. He knew enough about humans to know that their bodies couldn't handle the radiation on Palaven. She'd burn and be burned on the inside unless she had some sort of protection. The armour that she wore would probably serve to protect everything except for her exposed hands and face.

He rummaged in the pouches on her armour; it looked military issue and if it was, there would be little items included for survival. He was rewarded with a tube that looked suspiciously like sunscreen. He couldn't read enough of the human language to be sure, but he did recognize enough words to make a bet. Garrus squeezed some of the cream out on his talons- noticed his knuckles were scrapped raw on both hands, and started to slather it into the human's skin. It turned her white. If she stayed in the shade, she should make it for a while yet. That done, he rested. The sun was nearly down, but the heat would be unbearable until night.

While he rested, he studied himself and he studied the human. It was baffling him, and confusing him, this total loss of memory. He didn't know much about amnesia. Didn't know if one simply awoke without memory and all seemed normal or if amnesiacs were aware of the chunks of lost time and were distressed because of it. He knew he was distressed. The human was tied to him somehow- _surely she couldn't be 'tied'-tied to him. Humans and turians didn't mate unless they were deviants-_ But she had a tattoo on her face that matched his clan markings. And as he'd applied medigel to his scrapped knuckles, he found a silver band on the last talon of his left hand. Its match was on the third digit of the human's left hand. Her armour was blue and black as well…just like his, except the colours were inverted. It was weird as hell. Garrus knew that he knew this human, but he couldn't remember any blasted detail about her. Not even her name. When she awoke, and he knew that she must because the thought of her _not _waking filled him with panic, he would find out if she remembered anymore than he did.

Standard operating procedure for turian military in the desert was to bury the rations crates in the sand to protect it from enemies or elements. The crates ran on low battery power and kept the rations and water packs at optimum temperature for consumption. He could justify still moving about while the sun was up by hunting for the buried crates in the sand.

Garrus wasn't successful until well after the sun had set. He finally found the crate, buried not far from where the human had been laying. Dragging claws over the metal was probably the most delicious sensation he'd felt all day, besides that first sip of hot, metallic tasting water. He toasted himself with a water packet.

Nights on Palaven were by no means cool. They weren't scorching either. The human had still to waken, so he spent time tending to her burnt skin. He smoothed medigel onto her face and neck, into her hair where her scalp had been burnt, onto the crimson skin of her hands. The gel soothed, and he saw by the rise and fall of her chest that her breathing was becoming more even and restful. Maybe soon he would wake her up and pour some water down her throat. She had to be dehydrated. Garrus stretched out in the sand beside her. Waking to such hellish circumstances was tiring. Right now, all he wanted to do was _sleep_.

* * *

_One Week Earlier_

"You know what I wish I'd had when I was growing up?"

She stretched out, flexing her back. Garrus watched with interest as her ribcage fluttered into view with that motion, and then disappeared again beneath her skin as she relaxed. He was becoming something of an arm-chair xenobiologist since he'd tied himself to her. The structure of Ezmay's body fascinated him. He liked the way she was fleshy and lean all at the time. He loved watching her muscles flex and her skin flush with colour with exertion or when he teased her. He especially liked the way her breasts jiggled when he drove into her, and the way that her soft little cave gripped him and pulsated with her pleasure. Ezmay stretched out again, turning to the side and back, and he reached out to trace a talon down over the bumps of her ribs. She collapsed in on herself, laughing.

"That's ticklish." She grinned and swatted him away. Another thing that he enjoyed…how her entire body was sensitive to touch. He felt cheated. He was only sensitive between the plates.

Garrus settled back on his elbows and grinned at her. "What did you wish you had?" He asked.

"A dog. Well…a horse too, but a dog would have been nice." The sheets rustled as she rubbed her feet against his spurs. "We couldn't usually have animals when my mother was serving. Sometimes the ships had cats, but that was naval tradition. But dogs are so fun. They bond with you."

Garrus had never seen a dog before. He was told they were hairy little beasts that liked to chew on things. Speaking of chewing…he focused on Ezmay's ear, and leaned close to nibble on her lobe.

"If it's bonding you want…"

Her laughter was rich. "You pervert. We just did it twenty minutes ago."

"So?"

"You gotta give me time to recover. I can't keep up with you."

"As long as you admit it." Garrus ceased the nibbling, and settled for pulling his human close to his body. She was so damn warm. It was hard to lay there next to her and not get fired up all over again.

They were silent for a very long time. It was easy to lose track of time when they had such a fantastic view overhead. Garrus could remember leaving Palaven for the very first time. Seeing the stars, and then looking out the other window and seeing the red-streaked surface of his homeworld had taken his breath away. He just _knew_ from that first sight that he was meant to travel in space. It felt good in more ways than one; he'd had to restrain the urge to shed a tear at the beauty and the feeling of coming home. Laying here, with his mate, staring at the stars from their bed….well. He sighed with contentment.

From his side, Ezmay spoke. "Garrus, how is your father going to react to all this?"

Annnnd perfect moment shattered. His talons tightened on her hip reflexively.

"More than likely with a tantrum." He didn't want to think about it. "He's kind of old fashioned. I'm not exactly in his good graces right now."

"And I probably made it worse for you with the whole Collector thing." Garrus felt her cheeks sag against his chest.

"I'm a grown-up, Ezmay. If I was going to fall in line, I would have done it by now."

"I know. I just…" She sighed. "I don't want to be the only thing you have in the universe."

Garrus could have taken that any number of ways. But he chose to take it how she meant it. The separation from his family hurt, true, but he'd always clashed with his father's will. When he'd told her that he was a bad turian, he'd meant it. It was hard being an individual in a society where the wants of the many outweighed _everything_.

"You're not the only thing." He told her. "I have my sniper rifle."

She laughed again. It was a yielding, husky laugh. He liked it. He liked it better than Miranda's shrill, pompous giggle and Jack's psychotic cackling.

"You silly ass."

Garrus watched while Ezmay slid off the bed and padded naked across the room to the coffee table. He'd promised her a game of cards but planned on doing his damnedest to distract her. If there was one thing he'd learned from the Collectors and the Reapers, it was to savour all the time he could with her. Life was too incredibly short; his spiritual side didn't promise him an afterlife.

His talons folded behind his head. "What about your mother? Is she going to care?"

"No. She shouldn't." Ezmay leveled a glance at him as she shuffled the cards. She did it hand over hand and the movement made her breasts bounce a little. He tried to focus on her eyes.

"'She shouldn't?' She's not going to care that you're dragging home an alien?" His mandibles flared in mirth. "Xenophilia isn't deviant?"

She folded her legs beneath her as she sat. Three cards to him, three to her, and the pile in the middle.

"There's always something deviant in human culture. It used to be people with different skin colours. Then it was same sex couples. Or it was people of differing religions. Or it was people who were too fat or too skinny. Humans always have to find something to hate. It's a great fault of my species that we define what we believe in according to what we don't believe in." She flipped a card out. Garrus laid down a trump and took the trick. "Sometimes I envy turian culture; your hierarchy and social rules are so clear cut. Imagine what it's like to grow up having to find your own way and define your own values and knowing that somehow, you're always going to be pissing someone off."

"Sounds rough." He murmured. The Hierarchy wasn't as great as she made it sound. There were very real consequences for being an individual. "At least in your culture, it's not such a taboo to decide you'd rather be an artist when your parents want you to be a general."

"So both our cultures suck." This time she flipped out a heart. Garrus laid a spade on it, and took another trick.

Ezmay shook her head. "Is our marriage even recognized by the Hierarchy?"

_No_. He didn't want to tell her. Just as a marriage between a human and a turian wouldn't be widely recognized on Earth. "Not by the conservatives."

That tugged the corners of her mouth down.

"Does it matter?" He asked her, sliding a talon to trace the arch of her foot. "What we vowed was for us and us alone. It doesn't matter if Palaven and Earth don't recognize our binding if we still do."

The words seemed to still her. She smiled up at him and Garrus felt relieved. He hadn't finally been rewarded with something going right to have it drift away from him now. He'd said the words, and he meant them.

* * *

_Palaven_

The moon was high in the sky when he awoke again. The light was nearly as brilliant as the daytime sun was; it reflected off the sand dunes and lit up the outpost as well as a lamp would have. When he came to, he found himself curled around the human, with his arm thrown over her hip and his other arm acting as her pillow. He felt something uncomfortable beneath his armour as he shifted. Something sticking to his chest and poking with sharp corners. Garrus sat up, loosened his chestpiece, and felt within. He pulled the object out and found himself staring at the King of Spades. Confused, he blinked, turned the card over in his talons. What the hell was a card doing tucked beneath his armour…over his heart.

An idea bloomed in his head. All day he'd been finding matches of things on himself and the human. He wondered idly if she had a similar card, matching his, underneath her armour. Yeah, like he was going to go feeling under her armour. Shanxi turian he was not, but he didn't want her waking up and finding him groping her. He wasn't a pervert. But still…

Curiosity got the better of him. The pressure clasps on the human's armour were tighter than his own and he had to wrench them open. Her chestpiece loosened and hung away from her body. Tentatively, he reached between the hardened ceramic and her body. Through the under-armour bodysuit she wore, he could feel something smooth and inflexible pressed over her heart. Garrus took a deep breath.

Really, he shouldn't even need to look at it to confirm his suspicions. Just that the object was there, in the same place his card had been should have been enough. But he'd be lying if he said that….Well….

He shook his head at himself. Her skin was warm. A forgotten memory was stirring inside of him, and he felt like he was just on the verge of remembering. It was like the rush of recollection was just on the tip of his tongue. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he _liked _the feeling of having his hand down her bodysuit.

Perplexed at the wave of emotion, he snatched the card- _don't linger, don't let your hand linger, godamn, she is so warm, she smells good oh wow-_ from her bodysuit. Trembling talons turned the card over.

The queen of spades.

Now this was just too damn many coincidences. There was something between this human and him and there were too many matches indicating it. The question was, was it a message from themselves or someone else? Suddenly, he wished she'd _wake up_. See if the human had any answers. Hell, he didn't even know her name. What if she died there, from dehydration and unseen injuries, and he never even found out what her name was? The thought filled him with madness. And familiarity. He'd felt this way before about someone, more than likely her, and it had sucked his soul dry.

Garrus couldn't stand to sit still anymore. He was suddenly pacing mindlessly in the sand. The king and queen of spades were clutched in his talons.

* * *

_Six Days Earlier_

The extension of the temporary bulkhead and tunnel and the tethering of ship to ship was still disconcerting for Garrus. He'd felt countless ships dock at various stations, and gods knew, he'd seen and felt ship-to-ship docking being done before, but it still always left him with a feeling of 'too close,' as if there was ramming and explosions about to happen. Jacob opened up the cargo bay door and there was a hiss of shared oxygen between the two ships. On the other side of the door was the smarmy bastard that was acting as he and Ezmay's handler. The guy looked even more sycophantic in person. Garrus still shook hands with him.

"I'm very glad to finally meet you." Vic said to him. "I've heard much about you and Commander Vakarian, of course. I knew that if anyone could pull this job off, it would be you two."

Ezmay's voice came belligerent and unimpressed from Garrus's left shoulder. "We stole a horse. Doesn't require a whole lot of faith."

"Don't underestimate the job." Vic gazed at the horse appreciatively as Miranda walked it around the cargo bay. "This is a very valuable animal. It has considerable sentimental value, as well as material."

"Yeah, my crewman already told me it's a racing horse."

"It's more than that." Vic smiled at Ezmay in a way that Garrus didn't like. "This horse has very good genes, yes, and won awards. But it also represents the fulfillment of a vendetta. Revenge. You two of all people should understand that."

Now Garrus decided that he _really_ didn't like Vic. The oily act had been dropped on that later part of his reply and he'd revealed himself as cold, intelligent, frighteningly aware of his role. Just the type of person who should be working in the Shadow Broker's network. His first impression, and Ezmay's instincts, had been right all along.

Ezmay tilted her head and rewarded Vic with a dazzling smile. "You're preaching to the choir, my friend. Finally speaking a language I understand."

Vic's returning smile was no less sharp. "I thought as much. Now, after our friend is loaded on my ship, I would be more than happy to give you your next assignment. Did you have a chance to look over the contract the Shadow Broker sent over?"

They had, in fact. And Ezmay'd declared that it stunk to high heaven. She had put Miranda in charge of it.

"As a matter of fact, we did." Garrus said. "I have a few addendums."  
"By all means. Perhaps we could look them over in your galley? Over some coffee? That is how civilized peoples do this, right?"

Garrus was glad when Ezmay took over. She had a much more defined sense of tact when it came to dealing with delicate situations like this. The Normandy's security crew was still standing guard, and Jack and Jacob had been left to oversee that there was no breech, nothing to worry about down here.

"I would be honoured to offer you hospitality." Ezmay was saying. "Our Mess Sergeant makes the finest lattes you'll get this side of Earth."

A latte, as he found out, was something that Ezmay and Vic could drink readily, and something that he had no taste for. The bitter liquid was loaded with sugar and was viscous enough to remind him of the cleaning solvents he'd used on the Mako. To hear some of the crew talk, Gardener's coffee tasted about the same. So he instead watched while Ezmay laid out the changes to the contract.

"First of all, we'll want to change this clause here. About specified period of service. It's still blank, you see." Her eyes flicked upwards to Vic. "I'm afraid we'll need to fill that in first. A typographical error, for sure." Her voice had gone as silky dangerous as Vic's.

The agent smiled to her. "Of course. The arrangement with the Broker was three more assignments if I remember correctly."

"Two." Ezmay filled that part in. "Also, the Broker intimated that he would make the problems with the Council go away. I'm curious as to what that will entail before Garrus and I agree to anything."

"Well, I'm afraid it's not within the ability of the Broker to get you your spectre status back at this time. Politics you see."

Ezmay smiled at him.

"But you will no longer have to fear being hauled in by a bounty hunter, or security. You will be able to dock where you like. We will make appropriate payments to the right parties, and you will no longer be a terrorist, as it were."

Ezmay pressed him. "How exactly will you go about that?"

"Other people owe the Broker favours too. Other people who the Council listen to." Vic nodded as if he'd explained everything.

"People aren't going to die, are they?"

"Why? Do you want them to?"

"No." She said quickly, and then she amended herself. "No point served."

"Just so." Vic grinned at her.

"There was no pay specified in the contract." Garrus said.

"Yes. Well, I was under the impression that the nature of our association together was going to be strictly _quid pro quo_. Did you want to enter into permanent employment?"

Ezmay's eyes strayed over to him and she searched Garrus's face for some kind of clue as to what she should say. Of course they needed to sink deeper into the network, but if they jumped at the chance too readily, Vic and the Broker might become suspicious. On the other hand, the door wasn't going to be open forever.

"You need not answer now." When they looked up at Vic, he was observing them with interest. "If you agreed quickly, I'd have to wonder at your grasp of the gravity of the situation. I'll take the amended contract to the Broker, and he will send back a proposal with changes."

Garrus could feel relief in Ezmay's stomach. She didn't like the dealing in artifice anymore than he did.

"Now your second job. It's fortunate that we're dealing with your legal troubles as we are, because you're going to Palaven."

His gut lurched in swift circles. He had no desire to go to Palaven. Once they landed, someone would go find his father. Once that someone found his father, old Evandus was going to come down to the spaceport on a mission. Garrus's eyes went to Ezmay unconsciously. They were going to call her a deviant and a whore. They were going heckle her every step of the way for corrupting a turian. It couldn't be Garrus's fault, no. It was the human woman. Sweet, singing tempters with their soft breasts and thighs and whispers of individuality. Turian females would make the experience almost as bad for Ezmay as the males. Evandus Vakarian would probably be right behind them. He could be a real dick when he wanted to.

"Once you're there, you're to meet with a turian and collect a piece of information for us. He only has the one copy, and the media is so old that it cannot be uploaded and downloaded." Vic looked bored suddenly. "I forget the specifics, but supposedly each copy erodes the quality of the original. He's only copied it once, saw the problem, and insists on trading the original copy to us. This information is very valuable to the Broker, and this is the lynchpin that will show us that we can trust you after all."

Vic's tone went from informative and helpful, to bored, to needle-sharp in the space of less than a minute. Of course, Garrus was already mulling this over. This information…was it the information he and Ezmay were seeking? Stealing it would put them on the Broker's shit list for decades to come.

* * *

_Palaven_

Garrus lay pressed into the sand, staring mutely at the sleeping human. Trying to deal with the tremendous weight that was crushing his heart. He mewled. Was prone. Wanted the rush to stop.

But he closed his eyes again, and it washed over him.

Neon, dirty, grime, blood, tears. He wasn't in the sand on Palaven anymore. He was on a narrow cot in a domicile that he and the others tried very hard to keep clean and new. There were the sounds of breathing, sleeping, all around him. But he couldn't sleep. Couldn't forget the hole in his heart. Couldn't move past the sense of loss. Her. It was all her. He shifted drunkenly in his bed, struggling to find a position that was comfortable, failing. His eyes went to the photograph he kept near his bed. His commander. His _dead_ commander. He had nothing without her. All of this killing, this trapping, this taking down of the scum of the universe. It was his homage, his tribute, his slow suicide. Eventually he'd be killed. And he'd welcome the bullet in his brain.

Garrus opened his eyes and stared at the human again. It was her. She was the alpha and the omega of his existence. Her name was still a smudge on the annals of his personal history, but she was his commander and he was violently in love with her.

He cried out to the empty sand dunes. "I love you!"

The human still slept.

Blue eyes shut once more. _Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly._ So amused. So happy to be joking with her again. Turians were probably horrendously ugly to humans, just as the fleshy creatures were bloated and repugnant to most turians. But not her. Never her. She was beautiful. She was beautiful in the way that she folded her arms and smiled at him. Beautiful in her relief, in the way that her face had relaxed when he'd walked into the briefing room and looked at her. Beautiful in the way that she laughed and ribbed him. He wanted to roar, to capture her, to make her a turian's mate in every true way. He wanted to bite at her shoulders, and scar her neck, and draw the blue paint over her face while he said the words that would seal her to him. His face was blown all to hell and he was scarred, but she was his and she just didn't know it. He didn't know when she'd shifted from commander to mate in his eyes, but there it was. Even if she never intimated that she wanted to consummate with him, she was his. And he would let her do whatever she wished so long as she was happy. He was content merely to kill at her side. He would be there when she needed him. Always.

He opened his eyes, blinking away hot tears, and staring at the human. Garrus couldn't have gotten to his feet right now if he wanted to. He felt himself going into shock and was powerless to stop it.

"I love you!" He howled once more.

Closed his eyes again. Didn't want the rush of memory but greedily waded through it all. He couldn't help it. He was so close to her, crushed against her, talons clenching on her shoulders, _inside _her. God, he didn't know if it was safe for her, but he was so close and couldn't hold himself back. He felt warmth on his claws and smelt the tang of blood in the air. _Her blood smells like dessert. She smells spicy. She smells like musk_. She was a banquet and he was starving. He wanted to do all things at once. Wanted to thrust into her, wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and feel the delicate silk of her skin caress his sensitive places, wanted to put her on her stomach and mount her from behind, wanted to bury his face between her legs and inhale the heady scent of that most secret place, wanted to spill, wanted to taste, wanted to lick, wanted to, wanted..

He was up and running across the sand before he knew it. Was shaking the human awake and spilling water from a ration pack over her face. She was coughing and sputtering, and murmuring in pain. Garrus would have called out her name if he'd known it. He dripped water into her mouth and she drank. He hoisted her to a sitting position against his armour and held the pack so that she could suck on the straw and get more water. The shock in his system was dying down. His hands were shaking and he could barely hold the water pack and his human steady, but he managed it somehow.

She came to just long enough to call him "turian" and then she fell asleep in his arms once more. He picked her up and retreated under the shade, holding her as if she was a teddy bear and he was a terrified child in the night. There was a spot on the back of her head that was swollen and sore to the touch. The human groaned in her sleep when he prodded it with his claws. Blood was crusted and matted in her hair. Shaking talons smoothed medigel over the swollen place, even though he knew if it was a head wound, she'd have to just heal on her own.

Still….just…now, he knew. He knew. Didn't remember everything, but this human was indeed his. He was going to get her off of Palaven. If it was the last thing he did.


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N- After having a grievous lapse in logic pointed out to me, I felt it was only right to take down the latest chapter and re-edit it to make it believable and to correct the plothole. I apologize if this caused any inconvenience to my readers. I hope it's not too much of a leap and I hope this revision doesn't break the continuity of the story. Again, my apologies.**_

* * *

_Five Days Earlier_, _Orbit- Palaven_

"I'm sorry, Garrus, there's not any way around it. We're supposed to meet this turian contact of ours in Serdica. The only quick shuttle to Serdica departs out of Tectis. We have to dock there."

Ezmay did truly look regretful, but it didn't stop the swirl of anxiety in Garrus's gut, and it didn't put him in any better of a mood. It was bad enough that his mate was going to be covered in sunscreen strong enough to turn her white. Now they had to go through Tectis, which was going to get him flagged and he'd bet his rifle, his next year's pay, and mating rights with Ezmay that his father would come troddling down to the port. The thought of an intervention proceeding left a sour taste in his mouth. Evandus Vakarian was stubborn, opportunistic, and unfailingly conservative.

"My father's going to show up."

"You don't have to see him if you don't want to."

She didn't understand. Garrus wasn't a complete egotist. There was no way he could land in Tectis and not see his father. If he had to go before the Primarchs for an intervention, he'd have to refuse rehabilitation. If he refused rehabilitation, he'd be clapped in irons and taken to hard labour.

"You're sure we can't just take the shuttle to Serdica?"

"Garrus, its regulated airspace. I can't buzz the atmosphere and have Joker drop us in the Hammerhead. You _want_ them to shoot the Normandy down?"

"There's got to be another way. We can't land in Tectis. We're going to be tied up in an assload of red tape and while we're doing that, Father'll show up. He's going to insist I come home."

"You don't have to." Ezmay looked irritated, letting the datapad she was studying drop to her bare knee. Garrus had been anxiously stroking her calf, but now he was just as annoyed. She wasn't getting it.

"You're not understanding me."

"Well, why don't you explain again what the deal is? Because I'm not getting whatever point it is you're trying to make."

"I am not fulfilling my filial duty by flying around the galaxy with you. My father wanted me to be a spectre, not an outlaw. He's going to take me before the Primarchs and have me sanctioned." He tried to phrase it eloquently, to put it in terms that a human could understand. Even still, there was going to be stuff that didn't quite translate.

"You're going to get arrested?" Her eyebrow went up. "Do you want me to take someone else? You can stay aboard the Normandy."

"No." He said automatically. "I'm not letting you go into this alone or…"

"With someone other than you?" Ezmay sighed, and then shifted her attention to the datapad. He could see her examining distance between cities that had spaceports and their destination. "Calleva's about 12 hours away from Serdica. I can have Joker take us there and then we can charter something."

Right. Palaven's transit authority was notoriously strict about licensure and permits for crafts not manufactured on the surface. Still, he was relieved. He'd happily sit through a thousand day trip just to avoid having to deal with his father and the drama the old turian would bring with him.

"Thank you." The relief was naked in his voice. Ezmay started to say something, perhaps to reassure him, but he silenced her by seizing her thighs and pulling her closer to him. The shriek of laughter….God, he lived for that.

"Thank you.." He said again, bending over to nip at the exposed collarbone. "Thank you…"

Ezmay's arms came up around him. He was very, very welcome.

* * *

_Palaven_

His human awoke just as the moon was rising on the second night. Garrus halfway suspected that she had a head injury and that was why she was out for so long, but he wasn't a doctor. He wasn't even particularly talented in the area of xenoanatomy. One moment, he was gently washing the blood away from her hair with a water pack and the next moment, she was rolling over to stare up at him with a familiar look of disorientation. He murmured to her, whispering, soothing, wondering if she remembered anything that would fill up the holes in his mind. He'd remembered Omega, remembered that she'd been dead at one point, remembered serving on a ship with her. Remembered pleasuring her and melding their bodies together. He'd tugged her bodysuit to the side far enough to find scars- claw marks- lacing over her collarbone. The soft blue glow of the lanterns washed over her skin as she rolled to face up. It made her skin glow and made her tattoo brilliant. Garrus growled low in his chest. How could it be that a squishy soft human could be so _appealing_?

"Who are you?" He asked her.

"Ezmay Shepard. Who're you?"

"Your mate." He couldn't hold back the gravel in his voice. She looked startled. "Do you remember anything?"

He saw her testing her memory, looking inward. Without warning, she rolled to the side and vomited into the sand. She spat and gasped, and her arms quavered terribly as she held herself up. Garrus's talons curled around her waist and he lifted her up so that she wouldn't have to brace herself on shaking limbs. He wrinkled his nose at the sour smell; Thank god he wasn't a sympathetic vomiter.

"Surely it's not _that_ bad being mated to a turian…" His voice was joking, trying to inject some levity to the situation. He was bonded with her…which was godamned weird….and he knew very well that she wasn't disgusted by him. She was sick. She felt like shit.

"My head is pounding." She said as if to confirm him.

"I think you've got a head injury. Hell, I think we both do. And you're probably not handling the sun out here very well. Your skin is burnt to a crisp."

"Tell me about it." Ezmay watched him crouching nearby. "What makes you so sure that I'm your mate?"

Garrus didn't know what it was about her voice that made him unhappy, but he knew that he didn't like the brusqueness, didn't care for the business-like tone. She was all soldier and he had an overwhelming feeling that she didn't speak like that all the time.

"You've got my colours tattooed on your face, and this is a human thing, right?" He gestured at her with the silver ring. He had to admit, it was _highly_ comical when her eyes bugged and her mouth gaped like that. She saw the ring first, and then traced fingers over her cheeks. She couldn't see the thin blue line that matched his clan markings, but there was still a slight ridge from the tattoo being almost healed over. He knew that she felt it.

There was a length of silence between them that went from funny to awkward to torturous. And then she spoke up, her face turning a grey-green shade.

"I'm sorry…this isn't you.."

The human crawled away, out away from the canopy and where she'd vomited the first time, and emptied her stomach into the sand once more. He heard a muffled 'fuck' from her direction; saw her suck down the contents of a water pack.

"I don't suppose…there's any levo-amino food around here?" Her voice was ragged.

"Strangely enough, there is. Just a little though. I'm working on getting the radio fixed and getting us out of here." Though Garrus had no clue where they'd go. Shit. He didn't even know if she'd go with him. He pawed through the silver packets and tossed one to her.

Ezmay seemed a little better after eating. She settled back under the canopy and leaned up against the ration crate. She studied Garrus. He studied her. Damn, but her gaze was so intense. He started ripping wires and circuitry out of the busted datapads to distract himself.

"Mated, huh?"

"I'm as surprised as you are." He told her.

Ezmay took a deep breath, and sighed. "I know your name. Garrus Vakarian. You were with me on the Normandy."

Garrus gasped, dropping the board he'd been trying to yank out of the pad. The mention of the Normandy brought another rush of memory. It was coming in fits and stutters; had been most of the day. There'd been two ships by that name, and he'd been on both of them. He had a glimpse of a dark-haired human male. A biotic. Knowing glances between him and Ezmay. Smiles, touches when they thought no one was looking. The flash disoriented him. Talons curled around the datapad and he went back to work. His claws were shaking; the human gazed at him with interest.

"Remember something?"

"You were fraternizing with someone." He said sourly. Now that she was awake and coherent, Garrus wasn't comfortable with the easy possessiveness and the jealous instinct. He could tell from his human's awkward silence that she didn't know how to process that.

"So, the obvious question…" She asked. "What the hell are we doing out here?"

"I don't know. We're on Palaven, out in the desert. We had enough rations for a week, and we're both suffering from memory loss. We've both got superficial injuries; you took a bump on the head. I might have. I don't know." He said again. "Only explanation I can think of for amnesia."

Ezmay had cocked her head, eyes rolling to the side. "Palaven…." He saw her hand go to her chest, just over her heart. Holy hell…was she remembering the queen of spades? Maybe she knew what the significance was?

Suddenly, Garrus was on his feet and moving to her. "Do you remember the card?"

"The card?" Her fingers were inside the neck of her suit, and then she looked up to him with an expression of surprise so florid and startling that it brought him up short.

"The king and queen of spades."

"We stole something." Her eyes went glazed. "We stole something and it went wrong. I remember…..I remember the smell of apricots. And I remember tasting metal in my mouth."

Garrus curled at her side. Her face had taken on that grey-green again and he disliked it. There was something wrong with her, something that hadn't affected him in quite the same way. His talons wove into her hair.

"There was heat and debris." She frowned, that faraway look still in her eyes. "But now we're dressed up and we're talking to someone."

When Garrus finished stroking her hair, he looked down and saw a handful of the black strands tangled around his claws.

* * *

_Four days earlier- En route- Calleva/Serdica_

The tram from Calleva to Serdica was dirty, cramped, and smelled vaguely like urine. Garrus also didn't like the way that the turians on board were looking at Ezmay. They'd chosen seats near the rear, and he'd intentionally stuck her at the window, placing himself strategically in the aisle. He could see it in their eyes, the way they slid over Ezmay's tattoo and then the rest of her body. As if she were food. Then they'd inevitably look towards him. The Shanxi turian. The pervert. The deviant. He might as well have been walking around with his dick out for everyone to see, the way turians were looking at him. At least Ezmay seemed not to notice. She was humming to herself, typing on a datapad, reading up on what they were doing in Serdica.

The initial dose of information they'd gotten from Vic had shocked her and made Garrus's stomach turn. So, they were to meet another Shanxi turian, it seemed. Tullius Cheres was slime, a coward, and a true pervert. He'd gotten started on humans and branched out to other species as well. Currently, his favourite partner was a slim little human that had been born and raised on some backwater colony that wasn't important enough to be named in the dossier. She didn't speak, didn't question Tullius, and didn't appear to exist for any more reason than to be his arm candy. Together, they appeared to be into some truly sick fetish material. Whips, leather, stuff like that…..whatever. Tullius seemed bent on experiencing every fucked-up facet of interspecies sexuality. He hadn't felt safe enough to leave Palaven and meet the Broker's agent, so someone was to be sent to him. They'd arrive, dressed to the nines, ostensibly for his latest little get-together. He'd know them because they'd present themselves as Karn and Shana, two old friends. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. The thought made Garrus want to throw up. If Tullius's parties went anything like Garrus was suspecting they did, he'd be hard-pressed to avoid kicking the guy's ass before the night was out. Maybe the looks and glares of the turians on the tram were making him paranoid.

This was supposed to be in and out. Shake hands, exchange money for information, off-we-go. Nothing was ever that simple. Garrus leveled a death glare at a turian with orange streaks who gave Ezmay a lecherous grin. If laser beams had been shooting out of Garrus's eyes, the other turian's face would have been a simmering puddle of goo.

"You're going to blow our cover if you keep acting the jealous lover in public." She said under her breath. She did not look up at him.

The growl that had started in the back of his throat deepened into his chest as Orange-Streaks paced by. Eyes locked, and for a second Garrus thought he might have a challenge to mating rights on his hands. Then the other turian averted his eyes and passed by, out into the next car. Garrus growled in satisfaction.

"Jesus Christ! You're worse than Kaiden was!" When Garrus turned, Ezmay was staring at him with a half-annoyed, half-entertained look in her eyes. She didn't have citizenship on Palaven. It was his duty to protect her from whatever lawless perverts there were. "You might as well have pissed on my leg to mark your territory."

"Our cover didn't specify how jealous I was allowed to be."

"Look, I'm not going to lie. It's real sexy when you get all protective, but I'm a big girl. And you're drawing attention to us." Her fingers went to his waist and caressed him through his tunic. Garrus groaned. "So, cool it, big guy. Ok?"

"You better stop that, then. Or I'm going to draw even more attention to us." The banter put him in a much better mood. "Run over the plan with me one more time. I want to be sure we've got all our bases covered."

To his surprise, Ezmay's fingers did _not_ stop teasing him. Dammit, his plates were starting to shift. His eyes bore into her, but she pretended not to get the message.

"Okay, we arrive at Tullius's house early evening. Identify ourselves as Karn and Shana to his bodyguards. We wait while they check with him because although we are on the guest list, we're old friends whom he hasn't seen in a long, long time. He'll want to know immediately that we're there…"

Garrus's talons came down on Ezmay's thigh. He squeezed through the long layered skirt and saw the hint of a grin start to crinkle her eyes.

"Ezmay…" He half-groaned as her fingers started to massage at the curve where his ribcage dovetailed.

"We waltz in, talking with Tullius, meet some of his guests. Bullshit, mingle, yada, yada. After we've been there long enough to be polite, you suggest that the four of us go for a tour of his house. Emphasis on the "private" and "special" tour."

His claws dug into her leg; perhaps he squeezed a little harder than he meant to. The thought of sharing Ezmay with someone got him irate. And then she started those feather-soft touches. He forgot all about what he was pissed about.

"We make the exchange, and let ourselves out the service door. In and out. Just that simple."

Ezmay turned her face towards his, letting her eyes search over his face.

"In and out?" He said hopefully. Here, there, in the middle of the road, somewhere on Tullius's property. Garrus would have thought she was a horrible tease if he didn't know that she could count on him to fight with a bit more ferocity when he was all hot and bothered. It got his hormones up, brought out that feral dangerous part.

"Of course." Her voice was a low whisper on his cowl, breath sliding warm through his tunic and on his plates. "Just as soon as we get off this tram and settled in a room somewhere."

"Thank the Spirits for small blessings."

* * *

_Palaven_

There was something about grasping a handful of beautiful black hair that spurred Garrus on, drove him harder to fix the godamned radio and get his human off of this godamned planet. There was something wrong and he had no idea what it was. Worrying and trying to figure it out, to wrap his tactical genius around the matter, was warring at him cobbling together a radio that they could use to signal someone. Was the Normandy still out there? What the fuck were they doing on Palaven? Ezmay stayed in the shade of the pavilion by day and tried to exercise herself at night by the light of the moon. It killed him, literally brought the taste of bile to his mouth, to see her plodding half-heartedly through the sand. She wheezed, clutching a water pack and shuffled around as if she were very old. She kept no food down; Her hair was noticeably thinner after a day. Garrus starred at her, and then dove back into the radio.

It wasn't the radiation. Palaven's radiation evidently wasn't strong enough. She was feverish and voided her stomach into the sand. When he asked her why she was up walking around, she replied that she felt like she was going to go mad if she didn't get some kind of activity. Other times she complained that she'd give her own arm and one of his just to get her hands on a deck of cards.

"I've got this great game I want to teach you." She said, smiling weakly. "It's called briscola…"

Something snapped in the back of his head. His claws shook, the circuitry and soldering iron he'd been toying with to fix the radio tumbled. The hot end rang out against the ceramic of his thigh plate and fell harmless into the sand. There was a hiss as it connected with something inconsequential and flammable in the granules. Garrus sat frozen, helpless against the onslaught.

"_I'm glad you could come." Tullius seemed genial enough, but something was making Garrus' hide crawl. He'd learned to trust that instinct a long time ago; now he shifted uncomfortably in the crazy getup that Vic had recommended he and Ezmay wear. The turian turned, mandibles flaring in what was supposed to be a gracious expression. But his eyes lingered over Ezmay's body too long, danced over the tattoo on her face. Tullius had a fondness for leather and metal. At first, seeing the way the fabric hugged Ezmay's lean curves, Garrus had too. Now he thought the image was soiled. It made him angry. Their armour was waiting in the shuttle, but he wanted to run out and grab it now. He felt dirty passing through the anteroom where couples and groups had writhed and moaned. This wasn't a party. It wasn't a get-together. It was an orgy. He was on the edge of rage. Garrus flicked away the prodding fingers of Tullius' human. _

"_Spare the pleasantries." Ezmay said politely. "We're just here for the discs."_

"_All business. You must be quite domineering in bed." Tullius gave Garrus a mooney-eyed look._

"_Mr. Cheres, I'm unsure if you're familiar with how the Shadow Broker works, but let me assure you that he is not fond of people wasting his time." Again, she was infinitely cordial. Just as well that she was doing the talking. Garrus probably would have just snatched the pervert off of his feet and beaten him against the floor until he'd redecorated the chamber in blue. _

_Ezmay continued. "We're on a clock, you see, and as I understand it, so are you."_

_Beneath the two silver streaks on his face plating, Tullius blanched visibly._

"_Indeed, I am a little anxious to get rid of these damned things." The blonde curled her arms around Tullius' waist as he stammered. "The thing of it is, I will only turn it over to you if I can be sure you're really his agents."_

"_Why else would we be here?" Garrus snapped at him. "To dress in these ridiculous costumes and watch a bunch of losers fuck?"_

_The silver-streaked turian hadn't expected to hear much from Garrus because he flinched away. Now his fury was evident, and the pervert felt in over his head._

_Tullius' voice shook. "If you will just humour me. I'm told Madame La Braziliana is a card player."_

_Garrus could see Ezmay roll her eyes from his peripheral vision, could practically hear the burst of thought in her head that she was going to __**strangle**__ Jack bare-handed when they got back up in space. More importantly, she wanted to beat Vic half to death for telling this leech details about her._

"_I play a game or two every now and then."_

_Garrus's fingers itched towards a sidearm that wasn't there. "Get to the point before I lose my temper."_

"_If you'll humour me a game of Sueca, I'll be content and send you on your way. Besides I have to be gone from the party for a while or my guests will wonder who you are."_

_Sueca. He didn't know this game. Ezmay evidently did, because she looked shocked. _

"_How did a turian learn to play Sueca?"_

"_I've been around."_

_Even as Tullius said this, Garrus's instincts kicked into overdrive and went into red alert. The other turian stood with his feet and spurs planted wide. His hands didn't fidget, betraying the trepidation that he voiced. Ezmay's response was out before he could stop her._

"_Ready your Sueca table. I need a moment with my mate."_

Tears. There were tears on his face. He blinked his eyes and found Ezmay standing over him. Frantically shaking him. The tears were hers. They left trails on her reddened face and had splashed down on to him. When had he fallen over?

"Garrus!"

He curled his talons around her wrists and hugged her close. The memories were dancing seductively at the edge of consciousness and he wouldn't be pulled away from them. Ezmay's hair brushed against his scarred mandible, strands catching in the mottled hide and coming loose. She was shedding like a cat.

"…quiet…let me think…"

Silence answered him and he plunged back into the memory while she wept on his cowl.

"_Sueca's like Briscola. We're playing to take tricks and we'll use the same deck. Ace, Seven, King, Jack, Queen, everything else is worthless. The deal passes left after each hand, we play counter-clockwise. Ten cards, and dealer calls the trump. Follow suit, but you can fluff worthless cards if you are short-suited. Highest card of the suit played pulls the trick." Garrus started to speak, but Ezmay held up a leather-clad finger and shushed him. "It's played silent. But we're partners. Godammit, I wish we'd practiced something like this before. We could have worked out signals to get the upper hand."_

_There was a stress to her directions. Somehow the stakes had been altered. If they didn't win, didn't beat Tullius and his mistress, they wouldn't get the discs. Then the information would be at large, taken by whoever chose to kill Tullius and take it away. Garrus watched Ezmay strip off her gloves and gave her a questioning look._

"_Take your gloves off. It's the height of rudeness to play at friends with your gloves on." She nodded. "It's an old, asinine rule, but it's a rule all the same."_

"_Any other strategy I should know?" He whispered as Tullius came back in with the deck of cards and a glass of Palaven ale._

"_Watch the cards. We cover each other's asses. Win. Play like the cutthroat I know you are."_

_Tullius' mistress shuffled and dealt. Garrus took his hand and fanned the cards in his claws. The hand went around- spades- Ezmay played low and he laid down the king. The first trick was his._

_It was, perhaps, the most disconcerting card game he'd ever played. Cards usually came with booze and cigarettes or cigars, and loads of conversation. It was the most unnerving thing to play for such high stakes and in total silence._

_For someone who'd never played Sueca before, he thought he was doing rather well. They played around, gradually burning through all their cards. Tullius drank as if he were determined to drain every last dreg of alcohol he had in stock. His mistress- Garrus never caught her name- played with her hair hiding half her face. By the time they were halfway through the first game, he'd already worked out some of their signals that Ezmay had been talking about. Tullius would set his glass down with a thump when he was about to play low. His mistress would tuck her hair behind her ear if she could cover him and play high. It made it easier for Garrus to anticipate the round and set them back. Ezmay was in the process of pulling the next to last trick before he noticed what was so odd._

_His fingertips were numb, and the hide around his claws was starting to burn._

_Garrus looked up to her sharply, saw her hands shaking and the cards skittering out of her fingers. Her eyes went out of focus and then snapped back to him. Ezmay stood up with a start, her chair tilting, overturning. She stumbled. As he reached to catch her, he saw Tullius cough, sputter. Blood sprayed from his lips. Blue stains rained down over the cards. Garrus and Ezmay fell, tumbling to the ground, with Ezmay choking and gasping around mouthfuls of vomit. From the blonde's side of the table, he heard the same gargled wheezing. The human dropped to the floor as well. She clutched the queen of spades in her fingers._

"_The cards!" A breath went in, red blood foam came out. "The king and the queen!"_

_Beside him, Ezmay was kneeling, spewing, choking, but seemed relatively okay. Garrus crawled to the blonde. His vision was phasing in and out. He saw two of her, saw the skin on her face blistering._

"_What are you saying?" He tried to ask her. Didn't know if the words were coming out._

"_..king and queen of spades." She coughed blood, chunks of some yellowish tissue. Dear God, was she coughing up her _lungs_? "..discs. Lightener. We didn't think he'd come tonight. We thought we had time.."_

_Tullius was already dead, slumped over the table, blue blood draining from him and mixing with the ale, which surely must have been poisoned. He turned his eyes to the blonde, who was pressing the queen of spades into his hand and closing his talons around it. Garrus noticed now, the weight of the card, the odd texture. He hadn't had the queen in his hands tonight, hadn't pulled her on the trick. Now he saw clearly what Tullius had been doing._

"_Garrus, we gotta go…" Ezmay had recovered herself, but her skin was turning a shade of red-grey that made him swallow hard._

"_No shit…" He snatched the king of spades off the Sueca table and slammed the two cards into his pocket.._


	10. Chapter 10

_Palaven_

The memory of the card game was what broke through the block on his memories and effectively killed the amnesia. Once Ezmay'd said the word 'briscola,' he remembered the ill-fated game of Sueca, the deaths of Tullius and his human mistress. He lay prone on the sand and Ezmay had long since fallen silent and half-asleep at his side. To the best of his knowledge, she still didn't remember anything- _She doesn't remember the night before we hit the Collectors, doesn't remember Zael, doesn't remember the ceremony on the Citadel_-panic-but he had confidence that it would pass. Garrus lay and _remembered_, and examined his memories at his leisure, now that he had the luxury of being able to actually recall them. The weight and surprise of the situation leveled him, made him want to take some time to recharge. At least he knew that Ezmay's illness was from a contact poison or a biological agent.

_The leech's mansion was devilishly huge, and after they'd staggered out of the anteroom where the Sueca table had been set up, they got lost. Garrus cursed the architects, the builders, and most of all, the crazy fuck who'd lived here until three minutes ago. If they were outside, he could tell what direction to go by the location of the moon. Now all he had to go on was to head in the opposite direction of the laughter and moaning. He wanted the shuttle, he wanted to get Ezmay to safety, and most of all, he wanted to get out of this damned ridiculous gimp outfit and get his sniper rifle ready to do some killing._

_Ezmay's hand shook on his shoulder; his arm was around her waist and she leaned against him. "W-we were attacked. Why are my teeth chattering?" In fact, her whole body was shaking. Godamn, she wasn't on the edge of a convulsion, was she? "Bloody cold in here."_

_Almost immediately after Tullius collapsed, after he'd wrenched Ezmay up and out of the room, he'd realized that someone else was after the discs, that someone had wanted to kill two birds with one stone and eliminate all four of them. The only other person that knew about the information besides he and Ezmay, the Council, and the two fetishists that now lay dead was Anderson. If he wasn't in on it, and god knew that he had enough incentive, then he was next in the line of fire. And there was nothing that could be done about it. Anderson had left the Normandy and her crew with the Spectres that had flooded Ezmay's family home on Illium. Garrus gently steered Ezmay around a corner, ignoring the crazed feeling that was building in his head. He felt like he was being pulled in sixteen different directions at once, like he'd had too much stimulant and was about to go mindless. So, whatever was on those cards was affecting them in different ways. Ezmay was shaky and chattering and it hit her quicker. Probably passed through the skin faster. Soft caramel skin. Passed through his hide slower, made him hair-trigger, quick to judge, slow to evaluate. He sucked in air, and flexed his claws convulsively a couple times. Felt good._

"_Lightener. Have to remember that name." Ezmay was whispering in his ear. "Lightener did this, gotta find him, gotta kill him."_

_Fresh air! He dragged her through a kitchen, through a hatch. Outside the hot air of Palaven at night hit his nose. Made him feel a little better. A little. His head had started pounding._

_Their shuttle was at the end of the drive and he took them both the last twenty feet as fast as he could. Had to fight the urge to fling Ezmay into the shuttle. She leaned against the door and emptied her stomach again. Garrus shed the ridiculous outfit and yanked on the stretchy black undersuit that he always wore under the armour. The last real thought he had before he went mindless was Ezmay not being able to undo the straps of the stupid costume Vic had stuck her in, and his claws slicing through the leather to free her._

_

* * *

_

_Three days earlier- Above Serdica_

Her stomach was roiling. She felt like it was imperative to sit, and pass out, but she couldn't. She didn't know what had been on those cards, but she cursed herself. Ezmay should have seen this coming. She'd stepped naked into the shuttle and immediately sought her armour. It was hitting Garrus differently than it was her. Different biology, different effects. Through that link she knew that he was perilously close to losing control, if he hadn't already. Garrus seemed to be a creature of instinct right now. It was terrifying. She swore again, cursing her fumbling hands and the constant shaking. Obviously a neurotoxin of some sort, but with other effects on the body. She remembered how Tullius' human had coughed up chunks of lung and how her skin had blistered. It almost as if someone had released a gas weapon into the room too, but that was unlikely. Any number of implants and cybernetics would not save Ezmay and Garrus from a biological agent. It had to be a contact poison- her cybernetics had saved her from the blonde's fate and Garrus' were likely working to save him as well.

Funny, that him eating a rocket back on Omega would save him now.

Ezmay was half into her armour when the shots started coming. Luckily, Garrus's instincts didn't preclude him from knowing how to get the shuttle fired up and going. The sound of bullets slamming into the reinforced hull startled her, sent her gasping to the co-pilot's seat. Garrus lunged at her, tried to shove her into the back away from the glass, but she avoided his claws. He settled back, seemed to regain a semblance of that tenuous grasp on reality, and had just enough presence of mind to get them in the air. The shots lessened, stopped. Ezmay checked the readouts, saw the hull integrity was still good, and focused on helping Garrus stabilize their flight path.

"Losing it, Shepard." He hissed, and gasped. The fact that he was calling her 'Shepard' instead of her given name made her worry all the more. Her hands shook in another tremor and she over-corrected their path. The shuttle jerked suddenly to the right. Jesus Christ, they were going to crash if this kept up. Between the two of them, they were struggling to keep this damn thing airborne. They fought each other's fuckups at the controls.

"It's..It's going to be okay. Just focus." She said more to herself than to him. Her teeth clacked together, nearly biting her tongue.

"Trying." The flanged effect was more guttural. Garrus flowed with the over-correction and steered them out over the desert. They were practically fighting each other at the controls. Every input Ezmay made on the instruments came out wrong, different than she intended, whether owing to her shakes or the fact that her eyes were blurring and she just couldn't think, dammit. Garrus was making erratic changes, as if someone had given higher intellectual control to a Labrador retriever and let him have the pilot's seat. He steered them aimlessly. They had, perhaps, five minutes of relative safety before the impact came.

Whoever was chasing them- _Lightener? Whoever this Lightener was- _had rammed into them. The shuttle controls flickered, the lighted display momentarily going out, and then shuddered back to life. Ezmay's knuckles were turning white on the throttle.

What happened next, she wasn't sure. She knew there was another impact as the other shuttle rammed them again.

"Get your ass back there and get rid of him!" Garrus shouted over the whine of the controls, collision alarms. Burst of thought from him- _beautiful ass. _Vaguely, she remembered getting up, gathering the Cain, and strapping herself into a harness that would keep her from tumbling out the open shuttle door. Ezmay knew she'd keyed the control panel and opened the side door so she could peer outside. Her eyes went out of focus again, and she howled a curse into the wind. There was the sensation of hefting the heavy metal and pulling the trigger. There was the customary blow-back and fierce heat that always came when she fired the damn nuke gun.

_So this is what depersonalization feels like…_

Then the shuttle spun out of control. If she hadn't been strapped in, she would have flown like an angel above the desert of Palaven. Ezmay danced like a marionette. The shockwave must have kicked the ass-end of the shuttle up and forward. At least the other bastard was going down.

She heard Garrus cursing, swearing in several different colourful languages from the cockpit. The Cain was pried out of her hands by the winds, and was lost to the sands far below. The hum of the shuttle went dead. There was fire, heat. Her legs swung up, her body tossed around like a rag doll on a string. She clenched her hands on the harness.

_Dear God, I know you and I aren't on good terms…_

There were more curses, a scream of angry turian, the sound of an instrument panel being pummeled over and over. The wind and the shuttle spinning out of control slammed her against….something…her head came down hard on metal, in the same place as the old injury. She gasped, tears instantly coming to her eyes. Stars danced in her vision.

_..would you kindly let Garrus and myself live through this…_

The shuttle flickered back to life. Instruments shrieked, collision warnings beeping, claxons buzzing. The roar of wind, a fire had broken out in the cargo area somewhere. Flames licked her face. The world shook so much that she couldn't see, couldn't hear her own scream above the roar. Suddenly, she was thrown back.

And then the world went silent and dark.

* * *

_The impact of the shuttle knocked them both unconscious for quite some time. Lightener, if he hadn't crashed and died himself, must have assumed that he and Ezmay were dead. Or he was simply too debilitated to come and check. Later, Garrus would remember this as if it were part of a dream sequence, as malleable and surreal as any vision he'd had while drifting through the veil between asleep and awake. He'd pried himself out of the wreckage, had to rip himself out of the ruined cockpit of the shuttle. Coherent thought wasn't a given at that time; he operated on finely ingrained habit and was running on an energy reserve that could only come from animal part of himself that was not in command when he was himself._

_Ezmay was in the back of the shuttle, still secured by the gunner's harness and bleeding all over the floor. Red seeped from the back of her head. The canvas straps were twisted horribly; he had to slice them to get her free. There didn't seem to be any other injuries, thank god. The harness must have kept her from bouncing all over the cargo space. Maybe a sprain here or there. Her knuckles were raw and abraided from clutching at the heavy nylon straps._

_Gotta go, gotta run. Any moment, Lightener might be coming to finish them off. They had to survive in the desert. There was a crate of emergency rations in the back of the shuttle. Garrus freed it from the wreckage and set it aside. A survival kit hung from a precarious perch above where the emergency rations had been. He took that as well, and slung it over his back. Then he began his long march out into the desert. His talons hooked through the handle of the ration crate and he dragged it with one hand. His other hand was looped through the tubes of Ezmay's breather apparatus on the back of her armour. The crate weighed more than she did. Garrus dragged them both through the sand, walked. It was a hell of a hike._

_He didn't stop marching until the moon was about to set and the sky was beginning to colour brilliant with the coming day. When he turned, he could see his trail, but couldn't see the wreck. The only indication it was there was a plume of blue smoke on the horizon. He was satisfied that they were far enough away. Of course, any flyby would spot them, but he'd cross that bridge when came to it._

_It wasn't until he'd buried the rations and erected the reflective pavilion tent that he remembered the cards. He couldn't risk Lightener getting his hands on the discs. Talons scraped bloody in the crash –_or had it been when he'd bashed the control panel in frustration?-_ probed into the ammo pouch on his thigh. He found them both, glinting in the coming dawn. The king of spades went down his body suit, over his heart. Garrus could feel the edges poking into his plates. The queen he secreted in Ezmay's armour, in the same place. If they were split up, one would not have full access to all the data without the matching card. Of course, if Lightener took them both, it wouldn't matter anyway. It was fitting. The king and queen._

_Then he lay down in the sand. Garrus had reached the limits of his strength. It was impossible to fight the toxin coursing through his system. Whatever it was had killed Tullius. At least he only had the contact, not the deliberate ingestion. He was so very tired, and his head was throbbing. The pain was almost unbearable. His hands were still numb, the hide still burning. He was thirsty, but he didn't have any more strength. When he came to….if he came to…he'd worry about it then. For now, he gave up._

_

* * *

_

"When we got to Tullius' house in Serdica, we went in and met with him. He refused to give up the data discs unless you could prove that you were who you said you were, which was by playing a game of Sueca with him. We were almost done with the game. There must have been a contact poison on the cards. It started kicking in, Tullius and his human died. She gave us these…" Garrus brandished the two discs, formerly disguised as playing cards. "..and said that someone named Lightener was responsible for the poisoning. Then we got out."

"So, we crashed.." Ezmay looked better. Her skin wasn't as flushed anymore, covered with a thin white sheen of sunscreen.

Understatement of the year. More like they'd went down in a blaze of glory. "Actually, you crashed us. But it was necessary. They were ramming us and you fired the Cain at them."

That made Ezmay laugh. She sat back and began to tear open one of the silver MREs. "Sounds like something I'd do."

"Heavy-handed, but effective." He looked pleased. "It was pretty extreme."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing right."

She toasted him with a saltine, and nodded. The sun was beating down on them. Luckily the tent diverted much of the heat away. It was a good thing. The damned radio was on the brink of working. There was a connection loose somewhere, though. The static had flickered in and out with the radio teasing them.

"So, we get off of Palaven and back to the Normandy. Then we find this Lightener and beat the hell out of him. Or her." Ezmay said. She licked a crumb off of her lip. Garrus tried not to stare. "Had we decided what to do with these data discs?"

She still didn't remember. That question wouldn't even have come up, if she remembered what was on them Garrus sighed, set his tools aside.

"Ezmay, the information on those discs is pretty bad news. It's evidence that the human government captured and experimented on a group of turians a few hundred years ago. If that gets out, if we give it to the Shadow Broker, it could cost humanity a lot."

She swallowed hard. "So, we decided to destroy the information."

"Yeah." In a manner of speaking. They hadn't planned on what to do afterwards, and he told her that.

"Well, the Shadow Broker's going to be rather pissed, don't you think? That kind of runs against my supposed mission of taking down the Broker's network."

Garrus nearly squelched his response. The possibility he was about to venture…well, he just didn't want to think about it. But no…she needed to know all the options. She was his commander, as well as his life mate. She needed to be able to make an informed decision.

"It might be that the mission isn't really what it seems."

_That_ got her attention. "What are you suggesting?"

"You don't remember this right now, but you and I have dealt with some pretty nasty behaviour from others. They don't understand "us." Velarn is one of them."

"Spit it out." Ezmay sounded pissed, but he knew that her demeanour was covering up the realization. She already knew what he was getting at, but she didn't want to admit it.

"This mission is bunk. He put us in a catch-22 situation. If you play nice and try to take down the Shadow Broker, you have to let the Broker have this information. It's at large in the galaxy and humanity takes the hit. You lose your Council seat and no one wants to deal with humans anymore. You're just above vorcha. Or, we destroy the information. We have nothing to give the Broker. We could tell the Broker that Tullius was dead when we got there, but I'd bet my rifle that information would show up in a day or two that proves that we were there and we got the discs."

"Lightener.." Ezmay said grimly.

"Now we've incurred the wrath of one of the most powerful, dangerous entities in the galaxy. We'll be hunted for the rest of our days."

"That son of a bitch!" Livid. She tossed her food away into the sand, and spat with hate. "That backstabbing bastard. I bet he twisted the other councillor's arms and forced their hands for this whole mission. Godamnit, why didn't I see this sooner?"

"I'm not saying that's how it is. I'm just saying that's what it looks like." He cautioned her. Didn't want to get her too riled up. "At any rate, I don't think we should give the Broker the information."

"Okay, we could go to Liara."

Garrus blinked. He hadn't been expecting her to come up with a solution so fast.

"Of course, we can't go to Illium physically, but we get off this rock and contact her once we get in space. Have the crew tell the Broker that we're still lost. Liara's got to have some way to help us."

The radio sat forgotten at Garrus's side. He reached over and curled his talons through her fingers. Ezmay paused, seeming hesitant and unsure of the gesture at first. Then he felt the burst of comfort and her pleasure at the feeling, and she curled her fingers tight around him.

"You sure?" He asked her.

"Yeah. It's the best option."

"I'll get us out of here then." His fringe bobbed in the sun. 'If you're sure, that's good enough for me."


	11. Chapter 11

"You want me to tell the Broker what?"

Miranda was less than accommodating. Of all the strange requests Ezmay had put to her since the crew had recovered their commander and executive officer, the request that Miranda ostensibly be in charge of the Normandy was being entertained less indulgently than others. The commander had been back on the ship all of an hour, more than half that spent under Dr. Chakwas' care, and she'd been firing off orders the entire time.

The doctor finished adjusting the intravenous line; Ezmay hissed at the burn of alcohol against the abrasions on her knuckles.

"Tell him you haven't recovered us. Garrus and I were nowhere to be found. Presume us dead. That kind of thing."

"Why on earth would you want me to do something like that? Something went wrong with the mission?" The loyalist stood as she always did, as if posing for some invisible photographer, or as if she expected to find herself in a similar position in some centerfold or calendar foldout somewhere. Still, there was a perpetual air of being unsettled. Ezmay suspected Miranda still felt uncomfortable around Garrus; even now she was eyeing the turian, who was submitting to Dr. Chakwas' examination.

"In a manner of speaking." It wasn't the first time that Ezmay considered the possibility of selling herself to Cerberus. If anyone could protect her and Garrus from the Shadow Broker's wrath, surely the Illusive Man had some pull. She flicked her middle fingernail against the IV line. Not everything was back, in terms of memory, but she knew that slipping into the 'Commander' role threw Miranda off balance. Already the loyalist was pushing.

"Why don't you tell me what happened?" The operative asked. She leaned against Chakwas' desk, and looked back from Garrus to the commander. Her eyes had narrowed in a way that made Ezmay want to leap off the bed and smack her in the face. It irritated her, feeling chided and scolded like a small child.

"It would be safer if you didn't know. Plausible deniability. You'll give something away when you speak to him if we tell you." Ezmay flexed her hand, wincing against the cold liquid flowing into her vein. "Shit, I've already put you in a difficult position as it is."

"You needn't worry about my ability to lie, Commander." Miranda smirked at her.

Garrus watched the two from his perch in the corner of the infirmary. The banter between Ezmay and Miranda made him sad, filled his gut with a deep sense of foreboding. He couldn't pinpoint what it was that was weighing on him. It was on the tip of his tongue to jump in, to intervene between Ezmay and Miranda, but he didn't. Miranda and Ezmay had always danced around each other like two alpha females usually did. This wasn't his show to interrupt, nor did his mate need him to. Ezmay had more at stake in this whole thing than he did. She had a plan that she'd share with him when she felt she could, and she was his commander. In the bedroom, he may be able to savage her and lead her as he wished, but out here, the show was hers to run.

"I don't think anyone was worried about that." Still…couldn't resist a dig on Miranda. Garrus covered his eyes with his forearm. He could still feel Miranda's glare, could feel Ezmay's sudden burst of glee. It took a monumental effort on his part, to try not to laugh. When Ezmay was fatigued, she got a little looser and uninhibited with what she said and did. Though she and Miranda had been friendlier since the incident with Zael and Auralia, he knew it took constant work on her part to remain on good terms with the Cerberus officer. They were two alpha females, circling each other, living in uneasy agreement. Miranda was still a bit sanctimonious for his tastes. Garrus turned and politely pointed his face towards the ceiling.

"Commander, whatever it is…had it occurred to you that Cerberus might be able to protect you?"

"I don't need protection." Ezmay snapped. Then she paused and softened her tone. "Sorry, Miranda. I hadn't considered Cerberus and I'm not going to right now."

"Whyever not? Whatever kind of trouble you're in, there's some way it can be dealt with." It must have been so hard for Miranda to believe, Garrus was thinking, that there were things Cerberus might not be able to do. It certainly looked that way, with how the loyalist's lips were pouting and how her hip jutted out in a way that spoke of disbelief.

"Well, there's a lot of reasons. The whole creeper fiasco was a good starter." Ezmay's voice cracked as Chakwas administered yet another shot. "There's also the thing with that one soldier and the thresher maw."

"Shepard, not everything Cerberus does is like that. For goodness's sakes…look at the human government. How many shitty things happened on Earth before we found the Charon relay?"

Icewater ran down Garrus's spine. He looked up, over at Ezmay and he could see from the tightening of her jaw muscles that Miranda had hit a sore point without even knowing it. There was no way Miranda could have known about the data chip that Anderson gave Garrus, no way she could have known about the cards Ezmay and Garrus had gambled for. Miranda sighed. For the span of six breaths…Garrus counted….there was only the sound of Dr. Chakwas tapping away on a datapad, checking instruments, and recording the data in medical files.

"We're going around in circles here." Ezmay prodded.

"Yes. I'll do as you say, but you should know that the Illusive Man's requesting to talk with you."

"He's not going to sell you out to the Shadow Broker." Garrus said. He'd felt the ripple of anxiety and the slight boost of adrenaline that always flooded Ezmay's system when she anticipated something unpleasant. He'd felt it over and over again with each blast of antibiotic that Dr. Chakwas pumped into his human mate via needle, and now he felt it surge through her gut. Tubes and monitors held him in place on the gurney, but that didn't stop him from reaching out with words. Ezmay was visibly soothed; if she'd been a cat, her raised fur would have smoothed, even if she was still growling in the back of her throat.

"He's sell his own grandmother if the Broker was offering enough," came the rueful murmur from his mate from across the infirmary. "I'll head up and speak with him as soon as Chakwas releases me."

"It shan't be any time soon, Commander. I don't like your hydration levels, even though you did a pretty fair job of re-hydrating yourself out there. I also want to be sure that the toxin's out of your system before I let you go." Chakwas, who had until this point been making herself unobtrusive, graciously entered the conversation. She couldn't possibly need as much information as she had ostensibly gathered from her constant ministrations; Chalk it up to eavesdropping, but Ezmay didn't care.

As Miranda moved out of the medbay, Ezmay sank down into the gurney and stretched her hands behind her head. To the outward observer, she might have looked completely relaxed and in love with the feel of the cushioning beneath her body. Only Garrus noticed the furrow between her eyes and the rhythmic flex of muscle in her chin that meant she was clenching her teeth against her thoughts. Again that periodic unease from his mate. He was starting to slip into sleep, lulled and slurred from whatever was dripping into his veins.

"Go to sleep, heart of my heart." Holy hell…he sounded out of it, even to himself. Garrus had to chuckle at himself, which came out as a gurgle and a growl. "Nothing to be done about it right now anyway."

Ezmay didn't answer, but Garrus felt her wonder at the bond, just as her tension started to melt away into sleep.

* * *

Whatever sedative Chakwas had pumped her full of was good stuff. When Ezmay awoke, it was seventeen hours later and she felt like she could leap off the bed and take a victory lap around the Normandy with her shirt off. Across the medbay- remind her to brutally beat Chakwas for putting Garrus so far away from her- she could see the gentle rise and fall of turian plating as he slept off the medication. She lay, arching her toes and feeling the muscle of her calves stretch out in that delicious, first-thing-in-the-morning stretch. She bounced her feet, stretching out the tightened muscles and feeling the delicious tense and release of tendons and fibers that had been bound up far too long. For a second, she eyed him, taking in the length of his limbs and the colour of his hide. How had she gotten so lucky? Why had she never seen him in such a light before? Maybe he needed to change as he did before they became a good match? Several days ago, she hadn't even known him. Yesterday, she'd been surprised at the changes in him; this was not the Garrus who fought Saren at her side. Now…..the flood of memory jutting sharp through the fog left her reflective on the changes in personality.

They'd been lost in the desert for four days…maybe five? Ezmay couldn't remember. She didn't know how long she'd been out. Garrus's memory wasn't much better than hers when it came to after the crash. Too godamn long.

Truth be told, her memories were flooding back. Sometimes, her eyes would stray to him, and she'd get a nugget of gold. For example, she remembered that first hesitant time they'd made love. How she could tell he was nervous as hell and how she insisted that they take their time. Let things happen as they would. How she'd been toying with his plates and fringe and they found themselves having frantic, frenzied sex before they went to the Collectors. Lord, how embarrassed she'd gotten when she remembered that. She yanked her eyes away from Garrus's gurney and laughed at herself. Especially how her body reacted and how she felt a flush of heat spreading from between her legs and up into her chest. Her stomach was still on strike and her head still ached furiously at times, and here all she wanted to do was jump his bones.

Shit, she barely remembered the short, sweet little ceremony on the Citadel. It had shocked her, literally sent a jolt of surprise when he told her quite bluntly that they were mated. She'd married an old teammate, someone she hadn't even seen in a romantic light until he got gunned down on Omega. Not everything was back, but she remembered thinking of him as the duty-bound turian, that he was only along for the ride for Saren because of his lust for justice. She'd been so bound up in Kaiden that she'd never considered Garrus an option. Honestly, she was still so xenocentric, so ignorant and focused on her own species, at that point that aliens were friends and business partners, war buddies and allies. Not lovers. Not then, not ever.

Ezmay caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny, stainless steel of a medical monitor casing. Her reflection nearly scared her. The sallow skin, the dark circles under her eyes, and the omni-present tattoo. The blue lines streaked over her skin, standing out more because of her pallor. Before her death, she'd never considered the brash, young turian. Yeah, that had changed. Seeing the ring and feeling the tattooed ridge, recently healed, sank that in.

A sudden wave of anxiety yanked her in another direction. Her thoughts shifted suddenly, as they tended to do when she didn't want to consider something anymore, and Ezmay was tugged back to a worry that hadn't been taken care of yet. It nested at the back of her mind, whispering that it was still there, still waiting.

There were too many options for getting out of this godamned mess with the thrice-damned Broker. Liara had been her first choice. If they fled from the Shadow Broker, well…then they'd need the backing and protection of someone who was nearly as powerful. All the chattering, twittering asari that she'd dealt with on Illium treated Liara as if she were some kind of demi-god walking among the mortals. Liara's digs might be modest, her network not as expansive, but she was getting there. Plus, she had the psychotic drive and determination. There was some kind of vendetta that Liara was acting on, one that Ezmay didn't entirely understand. However, one could usually depend of people driven by emotion to push their hardest at something they want to do. Unless TIM, as Ezmay was starting to think of him as, had something really exciting to say, Liara was her best bet.

Christ…she didn't want to admit it, but she'd even considered Kaiden. He wasn't personally powerful, but she and he had enough old friends in the Alliance that someone might be willing to do something. There was a foggy scene of Garrus shaking Kaiden's hand. Her leg was in a brace. She was on good terms with him, wasn't she? Ezmay inhaled, the memory coming to her almost naturally, almost as it should be. She strained, grasping at it, struggling as if she had a word on the tip of her tongue. But the memory didn't come. She hissed in irritation. Well, common sense dictated that some of Kaiden's colleagues, some of her old war buddies _might _be sympathetic. Most wouldn't. Shit, she never knew how they'd react when they saw her on the arm of a turian. There was a thought chewing at the pit of her stomach that indeed, she _did _know, but just couldn't remember. She cursed. Sooner or later her fugue would clear and she'd be more competent. For now, Ezmay gnashed her teeth. They could just take off in the Normandy and disappear in to the terminus systems.

Garrus was right. This whole thing was a setup. Of course he was right. What would she have done if he wasn't here? Bled to death in the shuttle? Rushing foolishly and given Councilor Velarn what he wanted, which was to dishonor the Alliance? No. She wasn't going to let that bastard do her this way. If he wanted to take down the Alliance, he was going to have to do it with something more substantial than the skeletons that were buried in humanity's closet. The kind of skeletons every culture had. Unaware of the scowl on her face, and the furrow of her brow, Ezmay descended into anger.

No, if they were going to teach Velarn a lesson, she needed someone with both hands firmly in the underworld. She'd do what she'd promised. She'd take down the Shadow Broker and she was going to do it her way. Then Ezmay would gloat to his face.

A slight headache came and went, like an ice pick stabbing through her forehead. It was her early warning alarm, the sign her body gave her when she was getting too anxious and worked up. When she ranted and raged her body rewarded her with a migraine. If she didn't calm down, her hands would start shaking and she'd want to shoot something. Ezmay turned her eyes to her metallic-skinned mate across the medbay. Her body surprised her with a leap of desire, a curl of heat between her legs. The anger broke up and was replaced with warmth of the heart that made her lips twist upwards in a grin.

Damn…she was sleepy again. After the rage was gone, she felt wiped out and washed over. Sleep was imperative. Besides, there was a pull drawing her across the room. It was primitive, something she didn't entirely understand. She felt like a vase, broken apart and missing the penultimate piece. She'd be damned if she was going to spend another seventeen hours on a lonely bed.

The monitors blinked and showed a flatline as she unhooked herself; the IV stung as she pulled it out. It was worth it, though, to climb into bed next to Garrus and feel his arms twine around her. His hide was warm and his breath was sweet on her face.

"Wondered how long you'd stay over there…," He mumbled before they both slid back into drug-induced sleep.

* * *

Ezmay fought a valiant battle against Chakwas, and soon had Garrus and herself released from the infirmary and moving around the Normandy. The opening salvo had come from the doctor, who'd soundly chewed Ezmay's ass for switching beds when she discovered Ezmay and Garrus in the middle of a post-coital snuggle. The returning volley had been from Ezmay, who'd reminded the doctor in no uncertain terms of the differences in rank between herself and doctor. She had also reminded Chakwas, though in a more affectionate way, that the Normandy was run military style and insubordination was typically rewarded with a trip to the brig. Chakwas told Ezmay what she could do with her threats of the brig, and had conceded defeat, albeit with an insistence that she look Ezmay over before releasing the pair from the medbay. The doctor's parting gift had been one of Mordin's ointments for chaffing. Garrus hadn't thought it possible to see Ezmay's dark skin flush with embarrassment, but it did. That was the point when his good-natured amusement turned to outright laughter, earning him a half-hearted swat on the ass from his mate.

Garrus felt like a proper turian again, and he could tell from the spring of Ezmay's step that she was back to her old self-albeit with another chip to add to the ever-growing collection on her shoulder. He liked to think he was responsible for that, for the general good mood and the return of her devil-may-care attitude. He'd been surprised to find her little fingers exploring his plates beneath the sheet as he lay on the gurney. It had been enough to rouse him from the remainder of the sedative-induced sleep, and he took advantage of the privacy the back gurney afforded him, as well as the fact that Dr. Chakwas wasn't up and tinkering in the medbay yet, to show Ezmay just how much he appreciated her hands moving over his fringe. Gods help him, it had been like their first time all over again, with the way she gasped and cried out beneath him. The heart monitor had been annoying, flashing faster and faster in his peripheral vision. They'd taken a detour to shower and eat, and again, she surprised him by appearing behind him in the shower. Before he knew it, he had her pinned up against the wall, the water pelting both of them in the face. It had been worth it, to hear her moans echo in the small space of her bathroom.

Afterwards, she'd pressed her lips against his mandible and asked him, "It's always been good like this?" His talons had tightened possessively on her hip.

"Yes." Garrus promised her. "We move worlds when we're together."

Now, the ceramic of his armour made a dull thunk as he leaned back against the wall of the briefing room. Ezmay was already engulfed in blue light, talking with the Illusive Man. From where Garrus was standing, the hologram of the Illusive Man's face was flat and shallow, like looking at a computer screen from the side instead of full-on.

He didn't like this. The possibility of getting even deeper involved with Cerberus than before made his plates tighten and his hide burn. But he knew that Ezmay had made some sort decision while he'd slept off the sedatives last night, and she was bound and determined to teach Velarn a lesson. Once she made up her mind about something, only a very good reason as to 'why not' would be enough to dissuade her. She was stubborn in a way that would have made Garrus's old man proud. That thought yanked Garrus back in time, to earlier in the morning after Dr. Chakwas had finally, grudgingly released them from the prison of the med-bay and before he'd savaged her in the privacy of their shower.

The blink of the screen and the orange lettering had made his stomach roil; anxiety. He hadn't felt it since Ezmay had died. The sorrow and the gnawing emptiness had driven him into a bottle. Reading the letter from his father while Ezmay showered had put the phantom tang of turian ale on his tongue; he felt his salivary glands constrict in anticipation of a drink that wouldn't come. The association between the existential void and the alcohol was that strong. He could still remember the words, even now, even while watching his fierce, beautiful mate deal with the devil in a hologram.

…_dismayed to hear that you have chosen to walk the path of those before. It is unnatural and deviant and no one in proper society will choose to accept you back. I suppose you imagine that you will never choose to come back to the military. I hear you rationalizing it with yourself, even across this great empty space between us. You think you belong outside of the law, outside of turian society, and at her side. I will not argue that she is a great human, that she has done things that would be looked upon favourably even by the right people- our people- but the fact is that she's still a human. One does not mix the species._

_How come you didn't come to see me when you were on Palaven? You are a stranger to me. Surely you could have come before you went off on whatever fool's errand it was…_

Fool's errand. That's how this whole thing looked to Evandus. Garrus had never told Ezmay just how expansive his father's network was, that Evandus knew of their comings and goings. Likely he'd watched them board the train to Serdica, just as he'd watched the come into port at Calleva. Once, when he'd been younger, his father had told him about Shanxi turians in hushed tones. While Garrus had been helping his father to make some repairs to the family home, Evandus had issued an edict that if Garrus even thought about a human female in terms other than would be expected, he would find himself disowned. Well, apparently that had fallen by the wayside, much as Garrus suspected it would. It wouldn't surprise him at all to find that Evandus had some kind of lingering shame about attraction to a human. Probably been shamed himself at some point. Evandus had always reacted with vitriol to the thought of mating with humans, reacted much more strongly than Garrus would have thought appropriate. After Evandus threatened to disown him, Garrus had wondered privately if his father had ever dared look at a human female in _that _way. Much like how the human said those who protested homosexuality the strongest were like 'in the closet,' had the old man felt that pull to soft skin and silky hair, rather than spicy-scented plates? Garrus had never asked. Even he hadn't been stupid enough to tease _that_ animal. What was it Wrex had said ages ago? Only a fool punches a nathak in the mouth?

"The information's already been destroyed. They were old files about experimentation on aliens back on Earth…" Ezmay was saying. Garrus let his eyes travel over her body as she spoke.

Humans were such strange, awkward creatures. What was it about her that made him ache to be inside her? The mind and will aside, what was it about her physically? It was different, yes, but ultimately, it didn't matter. She was a pleasure on his talons and claws. He couldn't stop marveling at the feel, the softness.

He felt Ezmay's bemusement, then, and realized he'd been staring at her chest while thinking about the texture of her skin on his fingertips. He looked up at her and found the corner of her lips jerking upward while she struggled to remain professional in front of the Illusive Man. It'd be useless to tell her that his ponderings were more musing than lechery. Not technically true, but in any case, she wouldn't believe him.

"Well, if you can tear yourself away from the mission, I have something I'd like you to see." The Illusive Man said. Garrus heard the clink of ice against glass, and wondered how the Illusive Man managed to head up Cerberus while perpetually half-blitzed. He rolled his eyes while the Illusive Man's carefully neutral voice continued on. "It'll require your presence back on the Collector base."

That got both their attention, and Garrus found himself stepping into the blue light, in view of the Illusive Man. Was is just him, or did Garrus actually see a cynical quirk of the brow, a look of amusement in the cybernetic eyes? If the turian had been a little more contrary, a little more like Ezmay, he might have run his claws over her ass just to see if the Illusive Man's damned cyborg eyes bugged out of their sockets. Instead, he contented himself with wondering how the Illusive Man felt about his pet project's turian mate standing just out range of vision, then including himself as if he had a right to command.

"Officer Vakarian." The Illusive Man sounded genial, at least. "Good to speak with you. How is the new plating working out for you?" He referred, of course, to the plate holding Garrus's face together. The turian fought the urge to touch his cybernetics self-consciously. Instead, he made himself give the Illusive Man a nod.

"I'm grateful Dr. Chakwas had access to the technology."

"I'm sorry for the scarring. The cosmetic technology in the Normandy's medbay is designed for humans." The Illusive Man was at least making an effort to be polite, even if his words were pointed. Garrus was actually a little surprised. He was sure the extra deference came from his attachment to the impatient human at his side. "I'm sure we could talk Dr. Solus into modifying it to work with turian biology though."

"Some women like scars." Garrus put it tactfully. "Sorry, it's Executive Officer, by the way."

"Ah, yes. Your promotion." There was a bit of frost in the Illusive Man's voice now, hidden underneath all the civility and the magnanimity. "Miranda had mentioned that there had been an unexpected shift of things aboard the ship."

Ezmay put her hand out, silencing The Illusive Man and Garrus, who had been on the verge of speaking again. "Not important. Tell me about the Collector base."

The Illusive Man cleared his throat. "The scientists there have a theory, after analyzing the technology, and they'd like you there in person to hear what they think."

"It's as good a place as any to hide from the Shadow Broker." Garrus pointed out. The tactical part of his mind took over and the words were out of his mouth before he could think better of it. To his way of thinking, it was the best place. No one would dare come through without that replicated Reaper IFF technology, and no one else but Cerberus and their ship had it.

"You've got a point. We'll head there, but I want to go see Liara after it's all said and done. She was trying to stop the Shadow Broker."

It was on the tip of his tongue that perhaps it wasn't the wisest course of action, to speak in front of the Illusive Man about such things. Then Garrus realized why she'd done it; she'd rolled the dice and chosen to work with Cerberus. Must have done some thinking in the medbay, before she'd joined him in bed. For now, there were converging goals, and whatever ulterior motive the Illusive Man had ran parallel to their own- the preservation of humanity and of all particular humans right now, Ezmay herself, and whoever else she'd choose to take with her.

…_Sometimes you have to get in bed with the devil…..Better the devil you know than the one you don't…._

"Would it possible to get information on this Lightener guy that ambushed us in Serdica? My first choice would be the Shadow Broker, but ….well…" Ezmay spoke up again.

"You've had a falling out." The Illusive Man smirked. "Yes. I'll try to have something for you by the time you get back from the Collector base."

"Much obliged." She said.

The feed was cut, and the Illusive Man's face disappeared as quickly as it had come. The rumble and hum of the table rising once more was the only sound as Ezmay and Garrus moved towards the door. They didn't speak, and Garrus didn't know if they should. She was his commanding officer, as he'd had to remind himself several times already. Wasn't his place to question her. But he was also his mate, and in that respect, he very much had the right. As it turned out, Ezmay saved him the trouble of making the decision. She lingered in the hallway between the tech lab and Jacob's armory.

"Are you going to say it?" She asked, not looking at him.

"Say what?" Garrus replied, even though he already knew what she was getting at.

Dark hair swayed as she shook her head. Garrus reached out a claw to touch the strands. She let him. He sighed. If he knew his mate, which he liked to think he did, she wasn't going to let it go until every aspect of the conversation had been dissected thoroughly. She was going to worry it over and not let go of it, like a dog with a chew toy.

"You were going to say that it was stupid to get into bed with Cerberus?" Her finger darted out and hooked in his armoured cowl.

"Is it stupid?" He asked her. "Do you think I would have let you if I saw a better option?"

Garrus saw her visibly bristle at the mention of him letting her do something. A thought dawned on him, that her attitude and that deep pain inside her soul that he sensed from time to time was connected to her need to be in control. He chose to file this away, though. He'd bring it up later.

"I made the right decision." She told him. "We were already kind of working for them anyway."

"Who're you convincing?" Garrus asked her quietly. "Do you think you need to convince me? I mean, yeah, we're working with the one of the most notorious, human-centric organizations in the galaxy. But it's not like we're in a position where we can go through official channels. It's not like you share their ideology."

Ezmay was chewing her lip as he spoke. When it was her turn to share her opinion after digesting what he said, her voice was quiet.

"You know, the last time I saw you get pissed at me was when I questioned you before you shot Sidonis." She said. "You don't question me. You don't argue."

Good God, was she worried that she was trampling his feelings? Did she think he was going to blindly follow her into suicide without giving her some input? He checked the bond, and found confusion.

"I'm not a toy soldier." He told her, hazarding a guess that this was what she was getting at. "I'm going to tell you my opinion and give you tactical advice whether I think you need it or not. Don't question it just because I'm not raging and constantly questioning _you_."

Ezmay was silent, her face pinched. The dark skin didn't hide the darker freckles and the green of her eyes pressed on him. Her pupils were dilated; Garrus found himself remembering that human eyes did that when they started to get keyed up.

'Autonomic arousal,' Mordin had called it. 'Also indicative of sexual arousal. Very subtle sign, but unmistakable.' Which made sense, considering the rush he'd felt from her, when he told that she wasn't trampling him. The rush of love, of overwhelming regard. Still….better to be safe than sorry. It'd be a fine thing, to think she was ready for mating, when instead she was pondering the best place to shoot him. Her finger was still hooked in his cowl anyway. Garrus laid his talons over her wrist, and turned his head to nibble at her knuckle.

"Okay?" He asked her.

_Ohh, that had been the right thing to do indeed._ Ezmay pulled him close, and slid her arms over his cowl in a way that brought her hair and her scent close. It was a silent, wordless answer, and one that demanded they retreat to the Commander's quarters once more. That answer was good enough for him.


	12. Chapter 12

Using the Omega-4 Relay, even though they knew they'd pop out neatly on the other side whole and well was still nerve-wracking. Ezmay knew that underneath her gloves, her knuckles were turning white. She gripped the back of Joker's seat as the familiar rise, pull, going-to-vomit lurch caused her stomach do a back-flip. The last time they had come through this Relay, her skin had still been damp from a hasty shower and her more private regions had still ached pleasantly. Her conscience had been clear; Garrus was at her side. They had both been prepared to die and God willing it would be together. Now she felt her turian's talons settle at the curve of her hip, on a chink between the plating of her armour, and felt his thumb stroke through the bodysuit. When they'd come through last time, they hadn't yet been bonded. By now, he'd been through enough relays with her to know through the bond how they affected her, to know that she felt dizzied at heights and that she could only handle speed and sharp turns if she was in the driver's seat or caught in the thrall of adrenaline. She caught his talons in her hand and gave him a fierce squeeze. The flush of new love hadn't yet worn off- Ezmay still marveled at the novelty of him, the otherness. But Garrus was becoming as much a part of her as her own heart. She searched his face a moment….her husband. Her mate. Inwardly, she shook her head at herself. How many years of being tied together before she no longer thrilled at telling herself that he was hers? Her heart still thumped in excitement.

Joker expertly navigated the debris field, guiding them between and through the ruined hulls of a thousand ancient ships. Every ship that had tried to jump through using the Omega-4 Relay had been destroyed. They couldn't handle the pull of this area of space, the fields, and the Collectors. The Normandy was piloting through a graveyard, and everyone in the cockpit held their breath.

Out here, they were relatively safe. Out here, Ezmay did not have to focus on the Shadow Broker and Councilor Velarn's treachery. She was intensely curious about whatever information awaited her on the Collector base. What was so important that she had to go to see it, rather than have the information forwarded over via email? This curiosity carried her through the ship, onto the base once they'd landed, and down to where the Cerberus scientists were bustling and studying. The air of excitement was palpable; _science nerds_…she thought with a grin. It was cute. Like how excited she got with a new gun or an augment to her armour. She could practically hear Mordin wearing a path into the floor plating with all his anxious pacing.

Garrus was at her right shoulder. He always was. And he was on edge. She didn't blame him. The Collector base was no better for the installation and setup of all the scientific equipment. It was still hotter than she was comfortable with and it still had that unnatural _smell_ that permeated and threatened to overwhelm one's senses. Hard to believe that only a few scant months before, they'd been fighting their way through this mess. The setting primed both of them; the warrior instinct was blooming fierce. There had been blood here. They'd spilt it. No one who had fought and killed could ever forget where they had killed at.

"Still smells like a compost pile." Miranda said, her elegant nose wrinkling. She'd come along because Cerberus was her organization. Likely there was intellectual curiosity. Ezmay knew that glint in Miranda's eyes. Even for all the loyalist's complaints about the stink, she was happy as a pig in shit. Being in a lab suited Miranda nicely.

A white-coated scientist sighted Ezmay and the small entourage she'd brought aboard. Garrus and Jack flanked Ezmay to either side. At first, she'd felt a little hesitant to bring the tattooed felon along with her to a Cerberus installation. Then she'd realized that if she was double-crossed, she'd want someone on her side who was willing to burn the installation to the foundation. For the time being, Jack was behaving herself. The biotic didn't like being here, but Ezmay could tell she was restraining herself, which was good. Jack was strung like a livewire at her side; vibrating with energy and reading to spark at any moment.

"Commander Shepard! I'm Lee. Lee Montecchi." The young man was already enthusiastically pumping Ezmay's hand before she could really react. Back on Torfan, she would have reacted to this kid coming at her so fast by shattering his jaw. Now she had the good grace to smile artificially.

"It's Commander Vakarian now. And it's nice to meet you, Lee."

"Oh, yes! We've got interesting things to show you. I was told that Dr. Mordin Solus was with you?"

"He's on his way." A wry grin twisted at the corner of her lips as she thought of the salarian. Neither orders nor threats of death could have kept Mordin away from the opportunity to get in here and looked at the Collector base. Even when they'd been carrying out their final assault, Ezmay had seen the wistfulness, the burning _need_ on the part of the salarian to get in here, to analyze, to find out, explore, and know. When they'd docked with the Cerberus-installed bay on the Collector base, Mordin had announced he was going to gather his field tools and would be along shortly. Mirth had passed between Garrus and Ezmay.

"He is?" The news seemed to ignite an inner fire in Montecchi's step. "This is so exciting! Dr. Solus is a legend. I mean, he's a salarian, but still! Do you think he'd be willing to work with me?"

Jack grunted under her breath, "Fuckin' nerds…"

"You're in charge of this show, aren't you?" Ezmay ignored her, answering Montecchi's question by way of question.

"Well, not technically. But I've done most of the work." Lee signaled that she should follow with a jerk of his shoulder, and began to lead the four down the main hallway back towards the control room where Ezmay had faced the Human Reaper.

She snorted inwardly. If the Reapers weren't such a threat, she'd have laughed at the utter ridiculousness of the Human Reaper. Like some perverted joke by the Gods.

Far below the platform, scientists moved over the Human Reaper like ants on a pile of sugar. Ezmay could only imagine what kind of tests they were running. If she were a less disciplined woman, she would have spit over the edge.

"So, what was it that you need to show me?" She murmured as she moved away from the edge.

"Well, it's this…" Montecchi had already moved to a view screen and drawn up a model of DNA. At least, that was what Ezmay thought it was. She recognized the double helix that had been beaten over her head all through primary school science classes. Montecchi's fingers moved over specific parts of the helix, and enlarged them so Ezmay could see it better.

"It's very pretty, but what are we looking at here?" Garrus said from her left shoulder.

"Human DNA. Modified. Probably what the Collectors were using for the Human Reaper."

Enter the illustrious Dr. Solus. Ezmay's eyes went to the salarian and she felt the corner of her mouth going up outside of her control. Montecchi fell all over himself, moving so that Mordin could snatch up a datapad. The black eyes went over the glowing red letters displayed by the DNA helix.

"What's the deal here?" Ezmay asked. It was hard to ignore the perpetual hum through the entire complex. The railing beneath her hand was thrumming with vibrations of the power source. It was distracting, and she had to make considerable effort to focus her mind on the chattering salarian.

"Interesting. Knew other scientists had toyed with the theory, but no real practical application as yet." Talking to the salarian was useless. Ezmay and Garrus exchanged a look, the unspoken communication asking _'you want to be the bad guy or should I?'_ She shrugged, ignoring the pleased, smart-ass look on Garrus face, and took a step towards Montecchi and Mordin. For a split-second, she felt bad about disturbing the nerd-fest standing by the helix display.

"Hey, hey!" The snap of her fingers was just loud enough and just out of place enough to grab Mordin's attention. He looked….annoyed. Like someone had just yanked him out of a sound sleep when he'd been having a wonderful dream. "Mordin! Need the info. You're not the only one who's curious here."

"Characteristic of Collector battles included Harbinger possessing and controlling random Collectors. Cerberus scientists examining how this was possible. Just the tip of the iceberg of the research I suspect." Behind Mordin, Montecchi was nodding enthusiastically.

"Okay." Ezmay nodded to indicate that he should go on.

"Predominant theory is that Reapers are energy-based lifeforms, occupying metal shells."

_Well_. "Interesting." She felt Garrus becoming intrigued in spite of himself and wondered if he could feel her irritation at her own lack of scientific expertise.

"Right! Not like silicon-based, or chlorine, or anything like that." Montecchi piped up behind his salarian hero.

"Reapers undefinable. Unlike anything currently understood in science. Still too much work to be done. Possible reason Reapers wanted humans is revenge. You." Mordin smiled that peculiar smile of his that first caused unease, and then made Ezmay smile back. "Angered the Reapers. Could just be petty revenge."

"An intergalactic turf war." Garrus said.

"More likely explanation is that humans have a gene similar to Collectors, Protheans. A gene that allows the Reapers to possess and indoctrinate better than other races."

"But Saren was indoctrinated. So was Benezia." She said.

"Yes. Indoctrination possible for all species." Mordin nodded to Montecchi, who was anxiously bouncing behind him. "All humans possess the capability of biotics. Some stronger than others. Just like asari, only, not every human manifests biotic power. Another capability humans possess is the possibility of other psionic powers. Telepathy and whatnot."

The tone in the room turned from one of polite interest to complete dismissal. Ezmay laughed at Mordin. The idea was less ludicrous than it would have been three hundred years ago, since the dawn of biotics. But psychics were charlatans. Psionic power had never been proven. She was laughing, even as her stomach was roiling with anxiety. Garrus was queerly silent beside her.

"Oh, Mordin…I never thought you went into for this parapsychology bullshit."

"Not bullshit. Extremely recessive gene. Chances of trait manifesting and flourishing infinitesmal. Only one or two true psionics every other generation. Lots of people sensitive to things and not sure why. Uneasy and don't know why. Déjà vu, prophetic dreams, precognizance."

Her eyebrow must have still been raised because Mordin really tore into her then.

"Some skepticism healthy, but you, of all people, should be more receptive to theory. Turian mating bond evidence of heightened empathy. No explanation for it, especially in beings of opposing chirality."

She looked sharply to Garrus, who was studiously looking away from her. Ezmay was instantly conscious of many, many Cerberus eyes glued to her. All at once she was furious with Mordin for throwing her relationship with Garrus to the wolves. Of all the places for her xenophiliac tendencies to be exposed was in a circle of scientists with very human-centric interests. More than one set of eyes had that scientific glint. Unless she missed her guess, she and Garrus were going to receive more than one polite email requesting a clinical interview.

"The ability to sense a mate's emotions just one facet of psionic talent."

"Empathy is not psionic." Ezmay bit out. "There are entire professions founded on the quality of being able to be compassionate."

"Confusing empathy and compassion. Not mutually exclusive, but largely separate constructs. Humans so used to the presence of empathy in other humans that it is assumed to be a universal trait, rather than psionic talent. Consider Elcor, having to elaborate emotional context. Partial component of empathy being able to read nonverbal cues, posture, small kinetic movements, body language. Other component certain sense of just _knowing_. Turian mating bond is heightened empathy, unexplained link boosting psionic properties in partners."

Mordin had the words out in a rush. She struggled to keep up, and as the salarian was laying out the bases of his argument, she felt Garrus thrumming with anxiety beside her. He felt grudging agreement with what Mordin was saying, and Ezmay felt more irritation that she had had to concede the point.

It chapped her to say it, but.. "Right….what you're getting at is..?"

"Reapers intended to manipulate psionic gene in humans as they had in Collectors. Haven't quite figured out why they were 'processing' humans. Perhaps using genetic data in order to enable the psionic drive to come online. Use of human shape probably just whimsy. Sick joke."

Already the salarian was pacing around, fingers flying over datapads and consuming information as fast as he could gulp it down. That left Ezmay with the penultimate question, which she posed to Montecchi…

"Why am I here?" Not that she was complaining about being in the ass-end of the galaxy. Right now, this was the safest place she could think of.

The little science nerd, as Ezmay thought of him, looked abashed. In retrospect, at least he had the good grace to look ashamed.

"Of course, your relationship with Executive Officer Vakarian was on a need-to-know basis.."

Fierce green eyes narrowed on him. Unknown to Ezmay, cobalt blue eyes had as well. They moved in synchronicity, both Ezmay and Garrus straightening and fixing Montecchi with their stares. He shriveled like a puppy that had been kicked.

"…you're the most convenient source of human DNA that's been modified. That is…you're bonded with XO Vakarian…" Montecchi stammered beneath the heavy weight of those speculative stares. What he was getting at had already snapped in Ezmay's mind, but Garrus beat her to the punch with the question.

"You want to see if the psionic genes in her DNA have mutated with the mating bond in the same way that the DNA was modified by the Reapers."

The human bowed his head, his face an anomalous shade of red.

"Yes, with your permission. We think it might give us a clue as to how the Reapers use telekinesis and thought projection to indoctrinate, and we might be able to find a way to counter it."

The kid was really reaching. Although, to be fair, Mordin was nodding along like it was a sing-a-long, so that had to count for something. For a long time, she didn't say anything. To let them sit and stew in their anxiety as to whether she'd consent to the invasion or not…well, she'd be lying if she didn't say it was delicious. And she was more than little curious. Since coming to in the Cerberus base, with Miranda bitching at her over the intercom and mechs plugging for her head, she suspected…._knew_…there was something different about her body. Then the whole bonding…..

Ezmay turned her head and gave Garrus a sidelong glance. His eyes met hers; he knew she was looking at him. He was like a marble statue, but she knew what was going on in that head of his.

_Scary. I actually know what he's thinking._ She said to herself.

And the funny thing was, he _knew_ that she knew. If they weren't in front of people, she would have smacked him for all the smarmy, lecherous thoughts he was pumping at her. Ezmay had to rip her eyes away from him when she felt her body heating up. A low rumble of laughter went through Garrus's chest.

"What do you need for a reference sample?" She had to force the question out before she lost her nerve.

At that, Montecchi came alive. He was brandishing swabs and plastic bags like he'd conjured them out of thin air. Mordin moved off, even as the young human was chattering about blood and hair. "Of course, if you don't mind, I'd like to swab the inside of your cheek. And just a scraping of your skin…."

Ezmay's eyes rolled back in her head, and she shook her head at Garrus. There was the same smart-ass smile on his face.

"Keep on smiling." She said with her own sinister smirk.

"I know, heart of my heart." He'd settled his bony ass against the railing and was stripping off one of his gauntlets with a pleased expression on his face. He was still thinking naughty thoughts at her; he seemed to have anticipated Montecchi wanting samples of his own turian DNA to try to figure out why Ezmay's had reacted as it had. With her luck, it'd have something to do with orgasm, and they'd be begged for a performance.

"So, Mordin, am I right in assuming that you're going to want to stay here and play doctor for a while?" Montecchi was coming at her hand with a lancet; Ezmay eyed him. The tiny needle pierced her thumbpad and she grunted.

"So much to analyze. Can help to speed work of Cerberus team. Might help to give us an edge over the Reapers." Mordin waved a test tube at her. "Besides. Last crew leave was during your elopement. Collector base isn't Citadel, but giving crew lightened shifts and some downtime will increase peak efficiency later on."

The previously-silent Jack spoke up helpfully from where was perched on a chest-high wall.

"In other words, you're a fucking slave-driver."

Ezmay glared at her. "Thank you, Jack."

"A coarse description, but appropriate. Observations by EDI show that crew fraternization increased by 33.4% and.."  
She'd had to wait while Montecchi finished his cheek swab, otherwise Mordin wouldn't have gotten as far as he did. When her mouth was clear of cotton swab, she coughed, and cut in angrily.

"Jesus God, are we really going here? We've been running hot a little lately, but not any worse than usual."

"Right after the Collectors." Even in criticism, the flanging effect of his voice made her skin prickle pleasantly. Garrus continued. "Remember that one story I told you about reach and flexibility?"

Great, she was being railroaded. She fixed Garrus with a look that said _Unhappy with you._ "Et tu, Garrus?"

"We're safe out here in the middle of nowhere. It won't hurt to stay unreachable for a while. Give Engineer Donnelly time to try out that new still that he's managed to rig together."

Her eyes widened.

"He's built a still on my ship?"

One of Garrus's mandibles fluttered in amusement. He seemed not to notice when Montecchi applied the lancet to his thumb. Ezmay was irrationally more angry at him about that than him not telling her than one of her engineering crew was manufacturing booze in the guts of the ship.

"If he were pressing grapes in the galley would it be as much of an issue?" Garrus asked her.

"Asshole." Throwing her liking for wine at her like that… She tested her newly-reco vered memory and found Garrus's predilection for teasing to be a constant trait. "Fine. Mordin, have fun. Let me know if you find anything."

It was like she'd given him permission to sleep over and play with action figures. She and Garrus were already forgotten; Montecchi was shoving the DNA samples to Mordin.

"You." Ezmay pointed a finger at Garrus. "Our quarters. We need to have a talk about your insolence, post-haste."

The talk about his insolence turned out to be more of a demonstration of force. Ezmay snored softly into her pillow in the darkness beyond her desk. The sheets were tangled around her hips; the pale blue glow of the fishtank made her skin glow. If Mordin was to be believed, all across the ship, couples were pairing off and "relieving stress" with their chosen partners. Shore leave had a way of doing that. If that was what lightened shifts could be called.

Garrus managed to tear his eyes away from his valkyrie of a mate, and looked back down at the terminal screen. For what felt like the thirtieth time in the past hour, he deleted the document he'd started typing and began a new one.

_Father,_

_It doesn't surprise me that you knew of our coming to Palaven; you were always too willing to abuse the resources at your disposal to keep track of your children._

Garrus paused, drumming claws against the edge of the desk. To his way of thinking, the opening sounded harsh. But he knew Evandus prized bluntness and honesty. Feelings and niceties were inconvenient and prevented one from receiving the intended message sooner.

_To use a human phrase, I could give a rat's ass what you think about Ezmay._

No…that was _too_ blunt. Garrus backspaced. What would Ezmay say in such a situation?

_Fuck off. We're having mutant babies._

Her approach probably wasn't the best one either. Again, he backspaced. To think that he was the one in the relationship with all the tact; Sometimes, it scared Garrus.

_You know it pains me to disappoint you, but Ezmay's going to be a permanent fixture in my life, in one form or another. The bond exists, incredible as that is to say, since it's a human mate we're talking about. I know you want very badly for me to leave her and find a good turian woman, but you see how fruitless that would be since I've bonded. If I were to leave, I would be an empty shell of a turian._

This, his father should well know. Garrus's mother had not been who Evandus had bonded with, only who he married.

_I did not come to see you on Palaven because I was on a mission. It was time-specific, and no, it was not in the service of the Council or C-Sec._

Claws drummed on the desk as he considered what next to say. He wasn't sure what Evandus was looking for. Well…that was a lie. He knew exactly what Evandus wanted, but no amount of explaining, cajoling, or screaming would convince his father that Garrus didn't want to languish in C-Sec forever. If only Evandus could just meet Ezmay…..although Garrus was fairly sure that his being mated to a human would go over like a turd in a punchbowl, there was still that small, desperate hope in the back of his heart that Evandus would embrace Ezmay after he got to know her.

_My mate really is quite magnificent. I'm sure that when you get to meet her, you'll see what the fuss is all about. She's strong, and brave, and tenacious. She's everything you would have liked in a daughter._

Garrus could hear Evandus' rejoinder without even sending the email. '_How could she be a true daughter-in-law if she can't even give me grandsons?'_

His eyes went up suddenly to the bed where Ezmay's soft snoring had stopped. The last thing he wanted was her wandering up here and having yet another thing to worry about. Things were complicated enough for her as it was without worrying about some cranky old turian father-in-law. He squinted into the darkness and saw Ezmay tossed on her back, a forearm laying over her eyes. The glow of the fishtank revealed a drool spot on her pillow. Garrus snickered.

_At any rate, I'm not leaving her. I guess I'm a pervert, then. I know that disappoints you, just like everything that I've done lately. But I've learned to live with disappointing you._

Therein lied the beauty of the thing. Being with Ezmay for so long had taught him that he could define his own morality. Right and wrong wasn't decided for him, and it was incredibly _freeing_. When he stopped worrying about pleasing other people, all the priorities seemed to just snap into place. For the first time in his life, he felt truly authentic unto himself. He was as the Spirits had intended him to be.

There was nothing more left to say. Garrus typed his name and sent the email on it's way.


	13. Chapter 13

Sometimes in the mornings, Ezmay wished the Normandy was one of the gigantic dreadnoughts that her mother had served on in times past. It was hard to get a good workout on the sleek, little Normandy. If the ship had been much longer and wider, she would have run from stern to bow and been much happier for it. Instead, she had to content herself with stretching out in the privacy of her quarters, and then circling the cargo bay over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. A thought about finding some space to run on the Collector base came and went. Running there, she'd be pestered by Cerberus officials about interviews on interspecies relationships. Here, she could run in peace, because hey…no one really gave a shit that she was humping a turian.

Endlessly, she circled around the cargo bay. Didn't stop until she was pouring sweat and she could barely draw breath anymore. Then she claimed a piece of the cargo bay near the doors that was illuminated by a single floodlight and sat down to fold herself into stretches. The muscles flexing and then releasing felt good. She'd been pent up for far too long.

When she'd been in the Alliance, and back before her death, she'd used this time to reflect and meditate. Sometimes she'd thought about battles past, and tried to find strategic loopholes. Sometimes she'd thought about Elysium, about the family home, about her mother, about the coming visits back home. Now, she thought about Garrus. Always Garrus. Unconsciously, she grinned as he came to mind now.

He liked to tease her that she snored and drooled on her pillow. But she really didn't see how he had any room to talk, sprawling over the bed as he did. There were plenty of times she'd woken up and he was face down in a pillow with his spindly arm wound _behind_ his back, or the sheets got tangled in his fringe. He flopped around in bed like a fish out of water. This morning he'd absorbed her space in the bed after she'd risen, and by the time she'd dressed to run, was positioned much like he was jogging in place in bed. She'd taken a moment to pat his ass- only slightly bigger than her own and built with so much muscle it made her tremble- and had been on her way. She chuckled, remembering.

And then there was this troubling pull from her uterus. There was something primal inside her that was demanding to be mounted and impregnated-Jesus Christ…Ezmay Gabrielle Shepard….a victim of the Baby Rabies. Her friends in the academy would have laughed themselves bloody. She twisted her legs into the proper positioning for Dove pose, and turned to stretch out her back. What would a human-turian hybrid look like anyway? She struggled to imagine it. Truth be told, all she could conjure in her mind's eye was a grinning skull

Of course, the biological imperative to reproduce that was still messing with her insides brought the previous day's conversation with Mordin flooding back. She felt her lower gut constrict with anxiety. What was more important, the good of the many or the good of the one? It had come to this.

'_Every cycle focused around the Reaper reproduction.' The beady eyes were searching her face for comprehension; his spindly hands and fingers were both shaking and gesturing ecstatically. The understanding was dawning on her, but Ezmay wanted Mordin to explicate it for her. To confirm it so that she wasn't the only one having wild ideas._

'_We're impeding Reaper procreation.' She said hesitantly. Mordin seemed taken aback. She _never_ displayed hesitancy._

'_Yes. Citadel always seat of galactic civilization.' This, Mordin knew from Ezmay's conversations with both Sovereign and Harbinger. Short though they were, they were informative. 'Permanent fixtures of advanced technology. When civilizations reach galactic travel, will naturally gravitate and flourish near mass relays and Citadel. Easy for Reapers to find when reproduction cycle starts again.'_

_Ezmay didn't say anything then. Just looked at Mordin. There must have been a horrified expression on her face. She didn't need to continue talking._

'_Why females more deadly members of each species? Because of biological imperative. Biological drive to reproduce, to protect offspring. Males impregnate, move on.' Ezmay's stomach churned unexpectedly at Mordin's words. 'Females raise young, protect, nurture.'_

'_Sovereign and Harbinger weren't females.' She said._

'_How do you know? Lower voices? Lack of breasts? Female turians and salarians look exactly like males. Secondary sex characteristics not always long, blonde hair and massive breasts.'_

_That…was actually a good point. Ezmay shut her mouth. Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt…_

'_Thing is, not known if Sovereign and Harbinger female or male. Doesn't matter. They are protecting their reproductive cycle. You killing human Reaper same as getting between a mother bear and cubs. War with Reapers inevitable.'_

And that made the world filled with much more grey than black and white. She was fighting for the survival of all galactic races; the Reapers were fighting for their own survival through procreation. It made the duty no less important, but it also made the enemy more human.

She hated moral grey areas. She palmed the deck of the cargo bay and pushed herself up out of Cat & Cow and into Downward Facing Dog.

No sooner had the breath went out of her than two long-fingered hands slid over her ass cheeks. She yelped and her knees buckled.

Ezmay jerked her head around, to see who the offender was, half-knowing already. Garrus stared down at her with a feral look in his eyes. _My god, that look_… she thought, even while electricity was crackling from her heart down to between her legs.

"It's my favourite way of seeing you…." His voice was gravely, like he had a frog in his throat. "…sweat-covered, breathing hard. Gods help me, it's sick, but when you kill, in the middle of battle..."

She turned towards him while he spoke, eyes raking over his body suit, over the noticeable swelling lower on his body. He was crossing the distance between them, joining her on the slim mat she'd spread out on the deck.

"When I see you like that, I remember going through the conduit on Ilos, and you pulling me out of the wreck of the Mako on the Citadel. You just _burned_ with this light. I never thought a human could have that kind of spirit..."

Ezmay craned her neck, pressing her mouth against his neck as he crawled over her on all fours. He leaned into her lips, nipped on her shoulder. She hissed in breath, and then slid her arms around his ribs as the warmth on her shoulder began to flow. He collapsed down on top of her then.

There were few places she could think to make love on that would be more uncomfortable than the deck of the cargo bay. The yoga mat afforded some comfort though, as Garrus pressed her down against the deck and began to peel her clothing off of her. Her shoulder blades pressed into the mat, ground against the deck as he stripped her panties off of her and buried his face in her stomach. She reached down and slid her finger under his fringe. He moaned against her tummy.

"You smell like…I don't know. Like an after-dinner snack. Like I could eat you for dinner."

She knew what he was saying. She knew what he was experiencing as he licked between her breasts. She might have experienced herself as salty-tangy; to him, it was cloying, light on the tongue, like sampling some effervescent drink that bubbled in your mouth and left you refreshed. She felt the same way when she put her tongue on him. He was metallic, but underneath that, like he was made of sugar. His arms went around the small of her back and he surged against her, tongue still exploring the place where her chest met her abdomen. He filled her, not stopping to give her a moment to accommodate him; she cried out in the empty space of the cargo bay. No one would find them back here, out of the way.

"And you…" She gasped as he began thrusting into her. "Burning."

"Burning." He growled in confirmation. Now his claws were woven into her hair. His voice was almost beyond speech; Ezmay was so overwhelmed by arousal that she was merely content to cry out in pleasure as he buried himself in her.

* * *

Across the great distance between the Collector base and Palaven, video feeds did not carry so well. If it had not been for Cerberus's much-boosted communications capabilities, Garrus would have been spared the dubious pleasure of conversing with his father.

Yet here he was, staring at the old, silvered turian on the holoscreen of Ezmay's private terminal. Once again, he thanked his lucky stars that their shifts had fallen opposite today, and Ezmay as stuck in the CIC while he was on his off-hours.

_If only there was __**more**__ static…_ Garrus thought. But no dice. The comm. channel stayed open. And they were at precisely 2 minutes and 54 seconds of silence. Garrus stared at Evandus. Evandus stared at him. Eventually, the old turian should start fidgeting. Garrus's father did not like silence, and too much of it made him twitchy. It was an adolescent trick, but it was all he had to go on right now. Garrus shifted in the chair, laying an ankle on his opposing knee, and leaned back. On the holoscreen, he heard his sister Solana chastising an errant child in the background. Evandus coughed. As predicted, he broke the silence first.

"Bonded."

"Yes." A simply reply to a simple reiteration. "Like Actayon and Fleming."

Evandus shuddered. "And you didn't even have the decency to reach the rank of general first."

There had been quite a furor when some of the best and brightest salarian minds had proved the existence of a human-turian bond in scores of Shanxi turians. The most well-documented case had been between a general named Alkimos Actayon and a human psychologist, Rossignole Fleming. It was quite a love story, when one got down to it, but a story that the Hierarchy had tried very hard to treat as unimportant. Eventually it had faded to obscure knowledge and was only referenced in brief in the military codex.

Garrus gritted his teeth. He could see the codex page in his mind's eye. _ & - Cautionary, fraternization with species homo sapiens strongly discouraged. faced disciplinary action up to/including demotion from rank, placement in 2__nd__ Social Tier. The human failed to successfully integrate into Turian society, having never advanced past 1__st__ Social Tier._

"I think we both know that I was never going to make the rank of general." His voice couldn't have gotten any more acidic.

"You might have. You might have ran C-Sec if you had buckled down and stopped pushing your luck." Evandus had curled aged, shaking talons around a cup that Garrus knew must contain his nightly cup of tea.

"Look, Dad, it's pushing the Normandy's resources to be making an out-of-system call like this."

"Very well. What do you need?"

"Dad, I need some help." Garrus took a deep breath. "I suspect some treachery."

"What is it?" The old turian sounded impatient, but he was paying attention. That was a good sign.

"Ezmay…." Garrus ignored the flare of mandibles that signaled disgust. "…was given an assignment to infiltrate the Shadow Broker's network and take it down. She was given classified human information and was publicly fired."

"You're sure that was the reason?" Evandus prodded him.

"I was there."

Evandus grunted and raised his cup of tea to his mouth. _He's your father._ Garrus told himself. _Putting a bullet in one's father's head is frowned upon._

"After she was fired, we went to collect the data…."

"You said that she was given the data." Evandus narrowed his eyes at Garrus. Even over the comm. channel, through the light years that separated them, Garrus felt the urge to shrink away. He steeled himself, gritted his teeth.

"Let me finish. We destroyed the copy that she was given, found out that there was a second copy. We went to get it." Ended up in the godsforsaken desert in the middle of godsdamned nowhere. But he wasn't going to tell his father that. Just another lecture Garrus'd just as soon avoid. "There's someone named Lightener that's chasing after us. After the same thing."

"And you're working for the Shadow Broker and Cerberus. With an assassin after you as well." Evandus shook his head. Greying, withered fringe caught the light.

"C-Sec had deep cover operatives out and about too. It's the same thing." Garrus said.

"Not quite the same." Evandus had moved his cup of tea to the side, and was tapping at a datapad. "Let me see what I can pull up for you. You realize, of course, that I'll want you to pay me visit in return for doing this for you."

_Fucking Hell and Damnation_. One of Ezmay's more colourful curses came to his mind. _Of course he would want you come home for a visit in return for help._

"Fine." Garrus bit out the words. "I'm not sure if it'll be soon, but I will."

The old turian signed off and left Garrus sitting there, clenching and unclenching his talons. This entire situation was so damned complicated and he _knew_ there was something that he was missing. Something that he hadn't seen yet. If only this were on the battlefield. It was so much easier to see tactical advantages in buildings and doorways. This cloak-and-dagger bullshit….he wasn't so good at it. Even Ezmay out-excelled him at it and it was not because she planned ahead. In fact, it was probably the fact that she was a blunt instrument that helped.

He sighed, got up. It was almost time for him to come on shift, and the godsdamned Thanix would likely need to be calibrated yet again.

At least after the shift was over, he could sleep.

* * *

"_Commander, you better get your ass to the CIC, stat!"_

The panic in Joker's voice was still ringing in Garrus's ears. Several decks above him, his mate was running the CIC with ruthless efficiency. Information was filtering down and flashing on his display screen. It appeared nearly as fast as it was dismissed by him, and all of it went to figuring his firing solutions. EDI was a godsend; there was no way he could have kept the Thanix firing as rapidly as the computer did. The thought popped into his head that he ought to tease Ezmay later, about what a good team he and EDI made. _Leave you for the computer._ It was a cute thought; it would never happen.

How had this happened? They'd been lounging, idling in their cabin. While Mordin was skipping and frolicking through the Collector base, arm-in-arm with Montecchi and test tubes, the crew of the Normandy was running half-time. Donnelly's jury-rigged still was working to capacity. There had been more than one poker game in the galley. It did not bode well that half of the crew was running the Normandy drunk. If there was any time that one wanted the crew sober, it was in a combat situation.

His fierce mate had jerked up underneath his claws, suddenly all business, already out of the bed and getting dressed while she queried EDI on what situation was requiring her presence in the CIC. He'd trailed her, hurriedly zipping his bodysuit and pulling a tunic over his head, but then broke away when he saw that they were being fired upon.

Combat. It got the blood pumping in an altogether different way from sex. His place was in the forward battery, monitoring the canon, confirming targets, and adding notches to the Normandy's kill count.

Garrus yanked his mind away from the ruminations, and focused more sharply on the firing solutions EDI was presenting him.

A collision alarm blared behind him. If he hadn't been prepared by a warning message that EDI had flashed on his HUD, the sound would've nearly made him piss himself. Garrus wondered what exactly the battle outside was looking like. If the targeting information and the collision alarms were any indication, the shit had _royally_ hit the fan. A sharp, brief stab of anxiety went through his gut, and then he wrenched his thoughts away from Ezmay. Too much to do down here. Garrus widened his stance, and braced himself against the targeting console. Even with preparation, when the impact came, it stumbled him. He staggered to one knee, and then launched himself back up.

"Holy hell…" Garrus muttered under his breath. Over his link to the ship-wide intercom, he heard Tali rattling off a damage report. The other ship had hit the Normandy in the ass end; it would have been a full-on crash if Joker hadn't jerked the ship up out of the danger zone. Luckily, they'd lost only whatever was stored in the cargo bay, plus Donnelly's still. What a shame.

"_Brace for impact!_" Ezmay's voice was both grim and sharp over the intercom. The collision alarms had just a moment to chirp at him, and he was in the process of kicking his legs out into a wider stance once more when the world turned upside down. Whereas he'd been staggered once before, now he was knocked down. His fringe was crushed beneath him uncomfortably, and his visor went skittering across the floor. The ship, the very skeleton of the Normandy, seemed to groan. Wall panels twisted, broke, and fell. Sparks flashed out from damaged electrical conduits and the lights flickered and went out. The doors to the forward battery suddenly malfunctioned; he could see pots and other debris rattling around the galley. His heart started pumping harder, even though he had no time to react or to feel anything else

Suddenly, the ship seemed to lift, even though his brain was screaming at him that there shouldn't be a lifting sensation in space because there was no gravity to lift away from. Garrus felt his stomach roil even while exhilaration raced through his bones.

_Fuck me._ The thought popped into his head. That was Ezmay's thought, and his own were interlacing with it. _ They must be ramming us over and over…_ he thought, even while Ezmay's consciousness was rattling into his…_godamn bastards, thank God Joker's got this, that last hit would have _killed_ us if he hadn't jerked back as he did.._

"EDI, the gun!" He was being tossed around like a toy. The Normandy needed to keep firing, and he couldn't do it. If the gun could even be fired at all.

"I have the Thanix.." The AI told him. "Artificial gravity is failing. I suggest you find a safe spot so that when it is fixed, you are not crushed by debris."

And even as EDI was saying it, Garrus's body became weightless. In the red emergency lighting, he saw the few cargo containers beginning to float along with him. It was then that he realized that EDI's warning must have been meant for the lower decks, and that he had heard it echo in the area outside his door. Of course, the upper decks would be strapped in, or surrounded by small things like datapads and keepsakes. There was no need to avoid having a two-ton crate of supplies crush your head.

Even as he was fiddling with his omni-tool, and turning the mag locks in his footwear on, he touched base with his link to Ezmay. As always, the rush of emotion and thought was disorienting. Other turians, when they spoke in hushed tones with their children before a joining ceremony, spoke of a buzzing, a general feeling of empathy that overwhelmed one and made two sets of emotion into one. With Ezmay, it was like diving headfirst into very cold water. It knocked the breath out of him and for a moment, he not only forgot to breathe, but fought the need to draw air. Turians only bonded once a lifetime. Research done on the link was clear. It was only with humans that turians could hear thought. And apparently vice versa. Right now was one of the times that he wished he couldn't catch specific thoughts. It came disjointed, like a transmission over a broken radio. Her heart was pumping and her adrenaline was up. Just as his was. He watched as his visor floated away, reached out for it, and missed it. It floated away, taunting him by turning end over end. The doors to the forward battery were opening and closing. Garrus ducked as a shell crate floated over him.

If whoever was attacking them was down to ramming them, then he'd best be prepared for decompression. His helmet was up top, in the room he shared with Ezmay. So was his rifle, and for whatever reason, he was itching for it. Garrus cast a worried glance at the targeting display and found that EDI was handling the Thanix as well as he could. He shifted his gaze back out into the galley, and at the lift.

He really wanted his gun. His gut was bothering him; up in the CIC, Ezmay was worried about something.

The turian didn't have time to ponder it further. The gravity kicked back in, suddenly, and jarringly. Crates crashed to the floor around him. Garrus keyed his omni-tool and released the maglocks in his boots. It was too soon, though. The gravity stuttered and went back out. This time, Garrus let himself float. Fuck it. He was going to get his helmet and rifle. He could move faster by pushing off the walls in zero-G.

Ezmay's voice came abruptly over his earpiece. This was a private channel, one that was encrypted and more secure than the shipwide channel.

"How're you doing down there?" She was trying to sound amused, solicitous. He could tell she was vibrating with nervous energy. Her nerve endings must have felt like they were going to explode.

"Haven't done the zero-G thing in a while." He had to laugh at himself; he was like a baby flailing in deep water. "Am I right in suspecting that we've sustained some serious damage?"

"They were doing their best to crawl up our ass. We lost gravity. One of the hits came up right under you. Scared me." Garrus thought of the impact just before the gravity went the first time; that must have been it. Ezmay's voice was tight when she mentioned it. She didn't have to clarify that she'd been terrified _for_ him. "EDI estimates that she can get the gravity back working in two hours or so. The Normandy's in freefall; the fuckers knocked out some of our thrusters. We had some fires…" Her voice went distracted, as if she were reading aloud from a list. "Decompressed cargo bay, damage in engineering, uncontrolled lateral spin…"

"Is that all?" Garrus pulled himself into the elevator, and tapped the button for the loft. "Get a rubber mallet, knock the dings out..."

"I didn't even tell you the best part! Jack is of the opinion that we're to be boarded. We've been pulled away from the Collector base, and the enemy ships are circling. Once the thrusters are fixed, and the gravity's good, they're going to come in."

"Sweet." With a grunt, he pushed off of the back wall of the elevator and went flying to the door of their quarters. Christ….the hamster was going to be floating around in there somewhere.

"Where are you?" She asked.

"I want my helmet. And my gun."

"You're going to need them. Jack's got the security crew taking off floor panels so they can rig traps. You got any tricks up your sleeve?"

She referred, of course, to his days bagging baddies at C-Sec. Omega was a training ground for guerilla warfare. He ruminated on that as he floated through their quarters. His helmet was sort of near where he'd left it- next to hers on the desk. He snatched it up, along with his trusty rifle- _spared a couple seconds to lovingly caress the grip- _and was up and out of their room. The hamster was still at large.

"We got any kind of nerve gas? We could all go full decompression gear and just gas them."

"I'll get one of the boys on that. I don't know when they're going to board us, but I want a coordinated plan that we can put in place as soon as they start cutting through."

"Might want to weld EDI's doors shut. They last thing we need is them prying out the AI core." Garrus said. Ezmay made a thoughtful noise into the mic. He cocked his head at the sound of it.

"Ezmay?"

"I think we're going to lose the Normandy again."

"Of course we won't. I'm your mate and you won't even let me have half the blankets at night." He chuckled into the mike and felt liquid gold roll down her spine and warmth unfurl in her heart. Of course, she must be alone in the conference room, or the rest of the people in the CIC were running around with their hair on fire and couldn't hear her. She wouldn't dare admit weakness in front of her crew. "As if you're going to let some clown from the Shadow Broker's organization take the keys to your car."

"I have an idea." She said.

"Yikes."

She ignored that. "We're already in zero-G. When they cut in, they'll be in full decompression gear, but at some point the helmets are going to come off."

Garrus already knew where she was going. It was impossible to live around someone who was insane, without absorbing some of the crazy yourself. Boarders would have a hard time breathing without oxygen on board to do so.

"It could work." He told her.

"Get the team and the section chiefs in the conference room in ten minutes."

* * *

The engineers and the architects of the Normandy SR-2 had never really designed the ship to be operated without oxygen on board. It wasn't unheard of, really; ships were decompressed all the time. Never intentionally.

Ezmay was betting that the Shadow Broker and his army hadn't gotten the memo on how EDI had spanked the Collector's asses when the AI'd gotten control of the ship. They also likely didn't know that Jack had their number when it came to thwarting a hostile boarding.

"We're going full decompression gear." Ezmay said. Already half the assembled crew was in breather masks. "I trust everyone still remembers their zero-G combat training?"

She saw Donnelly throw Daniels a look. Shit. Had the engineers even been trained? Surely Cerberus ran their operations better than that? Luckily, Miranda put Ezmay's mind at ease.

"It's like riding a bike, Commander. The Lazarus Cell completed full zero-G combat sims. Should we expect to be fighting in vacuum?"

"Maybe. As most of you already know, we're in an uncontrolled spin. Once that's corrected, we can expect a hostile boarding." The atmosphere of the room went tense, as if the stomachs of everyone in the room contracted at once and in unison at the words. Ezmay fought the urge to giggle- a product of adrenaline- and continued. "We will outline our plan here, and section chiefs are to inform those under you."

Jack cleared her throat, touched a holographic key on the conference table, and began stabbing her finger into the hologram of the Normandy.

"They'll come in here, behind the cockpit, and here, in the airlock by the emergency pods. It's where I'd board, and the smartest places, really. You don't want to send a whole squad in; they'll be expecting traps."

"We'll be in here." Multicoloured dots blinked to life, in between decks, scattered over the Normandy.

"Between decks?" Tali sounded confused.

"We've sustained a lot of damage. There are a lot of holes that would be open to space if we didn't have protective fields up. We'll wait until they've got their parties on board and then EDI will decompress the ship." Ezmay told the assembled crew. "If we're lucky, a lot of them will be blasted back out into space. Maybe some of them won't get their gear back on before they pass out or asphyxiate. It'll be blind, broke, and bedlam in here. Let's see if they can find us with the lights out and no air to be had."

God help them all, Jack actually smiled at that. Donnelly laughed behind Miranda.

"We need to be in the skeleton of the ship. Unless you're near any of the damage, you're less likely to be sucked outside. It'll make it easier to pop out and ambush them." The tattooed girl announced.

"Donnelly, I want you and Daniels to weld the door to the AI core shut. They may have a good tech expert that can patch in through a console and give EDI a bloody nose, but they can't fully eliminate her from the equation if they can't get at her core. It'll take them time to cut the doors open, and that'll give us time to take out anyone attempting to do so. Shoot to kill."

Daniels blanched; Did she squick at the sight of blood? No, surely not. Ezmay felt incredulity ripple through her, knew it was Garrus surprised at her left hand. The question was answered for her though.

"Commander, I can't speak for Kenneth, but I don't think me and him'll be enough to keep EDI safe."

Hm, the girl raised a good point. Damn. Her first choice for this particular job was off trying to impregnate half of Tuchanka. "Jack, I want you down there. The AI core is precious…"

"Got it. EDI's about the only other bitch on this boat that I actually like besides you."

Miranda glared at Jack, but Ezmay was already moving on.

"Tali, Legion, they're most likely not coming exclusively for the Normandy's tech, but I want you working with EDI to be as big a pain the ass as you can. I want you two keeping them out of the computer system as much as feasible. EDI, keep it dark in here. Don't let them find the light switch. No one knows the ship like we do; the dark will give us an advantage."

Tali nodded, and Legion's vocals crackled in the affirmative.

"What can I do?" Came a voice from the door. Thane…just barely hanging on. He could barely stand, let alone walk or fight. Miranda tossed her hair back and gave a snort.

"What can you do? You should be in bed." She turned to face Ezmay, as if to ask _Seriously?_ "He needs to be tucked some place safe."

"I'm standing right here." The black eyes closed, both sets of lids blinking, and then Thane looked to the Commander as well. "Siha, my body is giving out, but I can still be of some use."

Ezmay deliberated; God, she wanted to put Thane to work. She really did. Hell, he was a better shot than most of the Cerberus crew, and he wanted to help so badly. How terrible it must have been to feel your own weakness and know that you were of no use in a combat situation.

"He can come with me." Garrus' voice startled her. She blinked, looking up at him. "This kind of situation, I'm not going to be sniping anybody. Thane and I can do the most damage with hit-and-run strikes. He's better with stealth anyway. I'll be his hands."

The silence in the room…..it weighed a thousand tons.

"Of course." Ezmay threw Thane a crooked grin. "Keep our XO safe, would you?"

"As you will it, Siha."

She watched as her crew began to file out, Thane leaning on Garrus's shoulder for strength. It was time to go to her own hidey-hole. Jack had wrenched off the ceiling plates above her perch in the CIC. She would be in the perfect place to drop a few grenades and disable the Normandy if she had to.

* * *

The Illusive Man had lied to Ezmay. The thought of it made Garrus grind his teeth together and angry bile rise in his throat. Cerberus was the only one that had the Reaper IFF technology. And yet, here were Broker vessels, uncrushed, whole, and unharmed after passing through the Omega 4 Relay. That meant Cerberus was dirty, or someone in the remaining crew was dirty. Garrus's money was on TIM himself.

Thane let out a grunt as he was bumped into a doorframe, and sharply reprimanded Garrus.

"If your mind is not with us, we stand no chance of victory!"

And now the double-damned drell was lecturing him. Garrus cursed himself under his breath. The weakened man had insisted on holding out in engineering. Next to the AI core, the drive core was critically important. EDI and Donnelly had collaborated on some creative sabotage that prevented the engines from firing up without a critical piece. That self-same piece was burning against Garrus's carapace. He knew how to insert it, power up the engines at a moment's notice. Joker had a private line to his earpiece. Thane lowered himself to Jack's cot and caught his breath. If not for the emergency lighting, he would have been invisible in the shadows of the lower decks. Garrus unclipped his helmet from where he'd slung it over his back. Once the locks were secured, night vision kicked in and the gush of cool air from his breather tanks washed over his face. Now with the world cast in sickly green, he could see the drell placing a breather mask over his mouth, and keying a field that would envelope him totally.

"Forgive me, but how are you going to be able to fight?" The question popped out of Garrus's mouth before he could think better of it.

"What is the human expression? 'Oh, ye of little faith!' Appearances can be deceiving." A smile ghosted over the drell's lips. "You just do what you do best. I will give you what opportunities I can."

The sniper rifle wasn't really right for the close-quarters combat they were about to see, but Garrus still clipped it to its favoured position just at hand. He paced. Didn't know he was anxious until Thane started to talk.

"I know you and your mate keep count of fallen enemies as a kill count. I have often entertained the notion of challenging you to the same contest."

Garrus stopped, cocked his head at the drell. "Why didn't you ever ask?"

"As if I am going to step between you and your mate." Again, that enigmatic smile. "It is an intimate game between you two. But I confess that I think I shall die today. I think it would be a fun way to go."

_Godammit to hell and back._ "Anybody ever tell you that you can be incredibly morbid at times?"

"Once or twice." Again, that same smile. It hit Garrus just then, that all the times he'd thought the drell was being smug in the past. No. That smile was mournful. How did that slip past him?

Thane lifted his head, cocking it to the left in that odd peculiar way he had. "You better find a place to hide. The sound of the engine just changed."

And indeed it had. It hadn't been until the power on the Normandy had been knocked out and switched to emergency generators that Garrus had noticed the hum of the drive was gone. Now it soothed him, ebbing through the steel of the Normandy's frame once more. No sooner had he registered it, and then Ezmay's voice came over the intercom. She was in his ear, just as she was in everyone's ear. They were getting ready to board.

"Five minutes to full decompression. Those in engineering secure your breather apparatus and find your places. They're swinging up alongside us. No mercy. Let's show these sons of bitches what a bunch of amateurs they are."

Thane was already crouching, tucking himself into the guts of the Normandy; Garrus did the same. He was conscious of the slashes in the hull, just to his left and back. Here, hidden amongst the pipes and conduits, wedged into the infrastructure, it just might be enough to keep him from being blown out into vacuum.

From the darkness to his right, a whispered prayer went up. The voice was silk in the red-soaked murk.

"Amonkira. Lord of hunters. Grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift. And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness."

Garrus hissed into the pitch black. "Thane. Shut. Up."

A low chuckle answered him, and then all went silent.

The wait between Ezmay's announcement and the initial clangs of metal against the Normandy's hull felt like an eternity. The metal groaned in such a way that Garrus could only guess was the result of an umbilical tunnel being connected. Ezmay and Jack had been right. They were coming in two places. Any moment, engineering would be flooded with them, and they'd be down here, crawling through the conduits and trying to repower the drive. The control key burned against his plates. It was the essential piece; the field drive could not power on without the connection of power from the master control panel and the catalyst. The Normandy's engines were unique; a new control key would have to be crafted. Tali's engineering expertise had seen to that. The field drive had stopped being standard once the quarian had had her way with it.

Thane's hand came down on his forearm; Garrus had heard the voices overhead too. The footfalls of armoured feet on metal walkways. Any moment they would be down here. He tightened his grip on his shotgun, imagined Ezmay sweat-covered, breathing hard, and in that work-out gear that left her waist conspicuously exposed. This was what he had to lose. They would take her; they would kill her. He could already taste the blood in his mouth.

Boots on the stepways, coming down. He waited. He was right where they wanted to be. They would check beneath the field drive first, to see if it was a matter of power being knocked out. He chambered some rounds.

Flashlights swung in, over the place where Thane had hidden and apparently vacated. Over the pipes that concealed him, over the scatter of datapads from Jack's Cerberus research. Two of them broke off from the group and came deeper in, close to where Garrus waited. These were the engineers. In any other organization, they'd be little more than grunts with an armed contingent, just down here to fix the engines. Within the Broker's organization, he could take no chances on whether or not the grease monkeys could fight. EDI's voice came hushed in his ear.

"Decompression in five, four, three, two…."

He barely heard 'one' because the Normandy groaned and then began to roar. All at once, he was pulled in sixteen different directions, and was suddenly thankful that he was wedged in and strapped to the pipes around him, with maglocks on. Even as it was, he was barely able to withstand the force that was tearing at him and trying to suck him through the conduits in different pieces like it was a cheese-grater. Bodies were sucked away, banging against conduits and walls, shooting out the hole in the hull that he and Thane had had to circumnavigate on their way across Jack's hidey hole. In front of him, the engineers were in a panic, maglocks on their boots kicking in. Garrus raised the shotgun and fired four times at chinks in their armour. The pressure subsided as the last of the air escaped from the ship.

There was no sound. Small tufts of oxygen from the enemy's waists let him know his shots had hit true. Beyond them, there was slowed movement that must have been Thane taking down what remained of the engineer's armed escorts. He didn't have time to ponder the dynamics of the situation though. His hand shot out as fast as it could in the weightless environment; the knife gripped tight in his talons met with purchase. The blade sank into flesh and he was rewarded with round, quivering gobbets of blood floating past him in zero-G.

How much time passed? He didn't know. He did know that he stabbed and lashed out and dodged a plasma cutter that came within inches of slicing off his arm. He fought with a fury, and when the last enemy was dead, Garrus found himself swinging to where Thane had been last. The drell was turning to face him too. They shared a nod of congratulations, a bravo to each other for not getting their asses kicked or not ending up spinning end over end out in the great void of space.

Did they have more coming in? He couldn't tell. He didn't hear anyone coming into the engineering area or down the steps again, but he could hear distant shouting, gunfire. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Thane if he fancied helping some of the others, but the drell seemed to anticipate his question.

"The drive is essential. We should stay here. Even if the others are taken or killed, they will not have the Normandy if we are here."

Anyway, neither Ezmay, nor EDI or Joker, had given them the all-clear. Garrus prepared to hunker down once more. Or, he was preparing to just as EDI was in his helmet once more.

"Kinetic barriers re-established. Life support back online."

The hiss of air was all around him. Jubilance! They'd kept the Normandy.

He turned to smile to the drell, but when he turned, Thane's eyes went wide and focused on some point behind Garrus's head. He reached out, seizing Garrus's forearms, and pulled. The roar of rising heat came hot on his fringe; Garrus instinctively bent double, and threw his weight forward. He wasn't fast enough, however, and when the blackness engulfed him, he was glad for it. The last thing he saw was a sliver of metal impaling Thane's throat, and the greenish-red sheen of drell blood welling out around the steel.

_Just breathe..._He told himself before he slipped into blackness.

* * *

_Just breathe…._

Her finger tightened around the trigger. The crate drummed behind her as the bullets pounded into the steel. It pounded against her back. Banged her shoulder blades, bruised her ribs. There was wetness on her cheeks. She knew dimly that it wasn't blood.

The link was silent. It was cold inside her. She was dead. Her world drooped and went gray. She wanted to lie down and die. She didn't want to be here anymore, crouching in the CIC, reloading while Miranda blasted biotics towards the elevator. Once more, the hot tang of adrenaline coursed through her.

In slow motion, her eyes popped open. She turned, hoisting her rifle, and leveled it down the hallway. One of the little bastards ran right into her sights and she took the shot. The goon's black- clad head exploded into a wonderful blast of gore.

"Scoped and dropped." She whispered. Tears suddenly stung her vision. Ezmay had to swallow hard. Every shot she fired, every bullet she put in someone's head, it was for _him._ He would have been proud of the way her shots were landing. She turned to the right, burrowing against the crate, hugging the wall and trying to shield herself from the rocket blast that clipped past her.

Once again, her ears started ringing, and her hearing muffled and died away. The blare of the Normandy's collision alarms was drumming into her skull. Sound waves reverberated through the hull and up her skeleton into her teeth. Ezmay gritted her teeth, bared them, and screamed as she hefted the scope to her eye once more. Shouting came from down the hall as the sound washed back in. One of them threw a stun grenade past her. She knew she should get out of the way, but this was done. It didn't matter anymore. The only thing that that mattered was spilling as much blood as possible. She plugged two shots into the gut of the grenade-thrower, and then took him in the throat. Another thug went down, clutching his knees. She ignored every second that passed.

The blast threw her forward, head over ass, tumbling. Somehow…_somehow_….she managed to keep a grip on her rifle.

How had this all happened? Her head bounced off of the floor as she landed and righted herself. The pain made her rage, took the grief in her heart and refracted it a thousand times. Even as the Broker's goons swarmed around her, she fought.

At least, she _had_. There she had been, fighting as if her life had depended on it, acceptance of the cold, dark bond tying her to a dead turian flooding through her. He was dead, and there was nothing left for her in this world. That's how it had been. How it had been for him, and how it was for her while the fists and gun butts rained down.

Then the bond had blazed alive within with a brilliance that would have blinded her if it had been something she could have seen. She was awestruck; the knowledge, the certainty that she was _wrong_, that something had happened and that he was okay after all.

The joy overwhelmed her.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Just wanted to apologize for being gone so long. I've submitted my thesis and actually had some time to work. This will be a short chapter, but it sets the stage for a longer one to come.++_

* * *

The Normandy's medical team was swarming around him, slinging medi-gel, yelling something about restraints. A little human female with close-cropped blonde hair was trying unsuccessfully to ready an injection of a sedative. They kept spewing meaningless words at him, things like 'wounded badly' and 'extensive burns' and 'have to lay still.'

_Like Hell…_Garrus thought. He lashed out and felt a bandage rip loose. Heat gushed down his side. He felt hands holding him down, and to his great shame, he couldn't pry loose from them.

"Where the hell is she?" He roared.

"Garrus Vakarian! Stand down!" Dr. Chakwas's voice overrode his. The injured turian looked up, away from the white-clad nurse, and towards the good doctor, who had burst into the medbay.

"Dr. Chakwas, I have to go find her..." He started. Spirits be damned, was that actually his voice? That pathetic mewl-growl. '_Ezmay'd laugh at me. She'd put her hand on me and order me to lie back down.'_

Tali had been the one to give him the report, backed up Miranda, who'd actually been in the hallway by Life Support and the restrooms with Ezmay. Tali and Legion, with all their technological wizardry had patched into the communications channel for the Broker's command team on the boarding party. They'd allowed them to board the elevator, and then had forced a stop on the crew deck. From behind the debris slung about by the gravity failures, Miranda and Ezmay had done their best to give the boarding party hell.

"_I'm so sorry, Garrus."_ Tali had said.

She'd let him see the video footage EDI had captured. He watched the whole fight while the medical team was trying to patch him up. He'd been calm, confident that Ezmay was somewhere on the ship. She was surely somewhere helping stabilize the ship, delegating tasks, sending people to various quarters to repair the hull breaches. He'd been calm through the entire damn vid, letting the medical officers staunch his bleeding and do their thing. He even took in a few breaths when he watched his mate plug away shots. Garrus would never get tired of watching her fight. He even had a brief, fleeting thought that she would have made a magnificent mother, if he could have given her a child. She would have guarded her children like rachni queen, all ferocity and blood-lust.

Then he saw the grenade fly past her. She had to get out of the way, out of the blast radius. But she didn't. He watched her flip off her helmet, toss it aside. Even though the resolution on the footage was pure shit, he could still see the tears on her cheeks. Her scream, her shots, and then the explosion from the grenade flinging her up and over the crate she'd been taking cover behind. What was left of the boarding party took that advantage to fall on her. They'd restrained her and carried her towards the elevator. A lucky shot brought down Miranda's shields, who'd had to drop down. He wanted to howl, felt hollowness in his chest. Surely that scream of rage from Ezmay had come at the moment that he'd been knocked unconscious.

His talons were shaking at that point, and he'd looked up at Tali and Miranda with a look that begged them to tell him that it wasn't what he thought it was. Perhaps Ezmay had just sent them down with the footage so he could see that she'd racked up more kills than him. Maybe she was going to come sprinting through the doors to the med-bay any second.

But Miranda had looked away, her bruised face stiff and betraying no emotion. Her bloody shoulder sagged underneath the weight of the news. It was impossible to judge Tali's facial expression through her helmet and the purple mask that blocked her face. But he knew then. _He knew._

Yeah, that had been when he'd gone full rampage.

"They took her away, but their ships are disabled too." Dr. Chakwas said, her voice cutting through the chaos. Tali piped in too.

"We're going to get her back. I promise. We're going right now." She said.

"Then I'm going with you." Garrus was already swinging his legs over the edge of the cot.

"Garrus, you're hurt too badly." Tali already had her hands on his shoulder, shoving him back.

"I just need some medi-gel. I'm going." He insisted. Had she lost her mind? Did she honestly think there was any way that he was going to be kept away from this?

"Garrus, if you'll just calm down a second…" Dr. Chakwas said.

"Every second we waste, she could be dead. She could be dying." They could be doing Spirits-knew-what to her. His memory flashed back to the insolent C-Sec officer on the Citadel and how his eyes had raked over Ezmay. Rage boiled up inside him, and then subsided. Tali was suddenly in his face, taking up his vision.

"Garrus, listen to me." Her voice was calm; it bit through the panic and anger and soothed him just a bit. "We are going to get her. If you will let the medical team do their jobs, and rest up while we plan this attack, of course you can go."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miranda bristle, but say nothing. In the chain of command, Ezmay had chosen to hand out promotions based on merit and trust. Tali fell higher in the hierarchy than Miranda did.

"When are you going?" He asked.

"As soon as we can put together a plan that has some chance of succeeding."

"They're just a bunch of mercenaries." Garrus started.

"But they're not. You saw that on the vid. This was precise, coordinated." Miranda cut in. Her voice went gentler. "EDI believes that this assassin that was chasing you planned this all. She thinks he's on the dreadnought."

This was worse. He felt his stomach lurch at her words. But Tali was right. He had to calm himself. He was no use to anyone, especially his mate, if he was insane with rage and fear. Garrus sucked in a deep breath.

"That's better." Tali said. He could hear a half-smile in her words. "Look, we're a tactical team. All of us were hand-picked by Shepard. But we are not an assault team. We'd need an entire platoon to take the ship. We have to find a stealthier way of doing this."

"And you're not going anywhere until your blood has decided to stay in your body." Dr. Chakwas said. Garrus realized that she'd slipped him an anesthetic while Tali was talking, and was stitching up the gash in his side. He'd never even noticed the needle in his hide. "You've got quite a lot of burns, which the medi-gel can repair in a relatively short time. You've cracked ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. I've got to at least fix that if you're going to running off to get killed."

"I'm not waiting long." He said.

Tali chuckled.

"No one expected you to, you stupid turian bosh-tet. Now if you will just lie back for a while, we'll get planning. The longer you fuss down here, the longer we have to wait to go get her."

A sigh went out of Garrus. This, at least, was the truth. He turned his attention to that little slice of his mind that Ezmay seemed to live in nowadays. She wasn't dead, and she wasn't terrified or in pain, so he could at least lean on that.

"Fine." Garrus let the combined hands of the medical team press him back on the cot. "If we're not out of here in an hour, though, I'm going. Even if I have to take the damned IV pole with me."

"There's a big surprise." Tali again laughed that soft, half-amused laugh of hers.

* * *

She'd fought hard, at least she had that. Not that it did much good when one was outnumbered. The Shadow Broker's mercenaries had come on sleek little ships through the Omega-4 Relay, which had distracted them from the appearance of an honest-to-God dreadnought when it had jumped through. And now here she was.

"Well, fuck me." Ezmay laughed inwardly. It was all she could do at the moment. She was starting to look like a real damsel in distress. Only problem was that her Prince Charming couldn't exactly storm the castle gates and rescue her this time. She curled her hands up into balled fists and tested her restraints once again. The jolt of electricity hit her. She breathed in a hiss of air in response.

So, they were serious about this whole prisoner thing. She woken up in shackles made of energy that had a delayed electrical shock. When she'd opened her eyes, her initial reaction had been to bolt up, to struggle. The blank room she was in had only the gurney she was on and a full wall mirror on the other side. The lights were harshly bright, and the walls and floor were stainless steel. Interrogation room. She'd never been in one, but then again, this didn't require a huge leap of logic. Ezmay was willing to bet the delay on the electric shocks meant there was a computer jockey on the other side of the mirror watching her and happily zapping her whenever she got too energetic with her restraints.

The way she saw it, if someone wanted to sign their own death warrant, then that was up to them. She'd always vowed to her captors that they'd die screaming when she got loose. There was no escaping from this room. Either she'd die here, or they'd move her to a cell. All she needed was a chance.

So she'd behaved. Slumped back on the gurney, which was attached to some sort of pedestal on the floor and was tilted up so that she was half-way standing on a little platform. She put on her best "I'm so defeated and broken" face. Now all she had to do was wait.

At least the reassuring hum of an engine told her she was on a ship. Though….it didn't sound quite right. Probably broken. EDI had fired some good shots into one of the dreadnought's flanks and brought down the ship's shielding. There had been a direct hit. If only she could get loose before they fixed the engines. Now how to play this…

She was deep in thought when there was a hiss of metal on metal from behind her. In the mirror, she caught sight of a trio of men entering her interrogation room. Her head lifted slightly, towards the sound. She heaved a deep breath, and watched them through hooded eyes. It wasn't hard to feign; one of her eyes was already swollen shut. Thank God this wasn't a repeat of Zael's interrogation; she didn't really want to spend six more months with a damned cane.

No one spoke. One of them was obviously in command judging by the way two of the three fell back behind him. They circled her, one of them tapping furiously on a datapad. The leader broke away from the two, and stood before her. He surveyed her. His eyes were grey. His hair, if he'd chosen to grow it out was black; as it was, it was close cropped. It was a non-descript face; He could have been anyone. The better to blend in with the crowds. Her gut clenched. This had to be Lightener.

She let the silence stretch out. If he wanted any information, he was going to have to work for it, dammit.

One of the other men was the first to break the silence, handing the datapad to Lightener.

"Genetic data was confirmed. If we had any doubts before, this is her."

Lightener's eyes went over the scrolling letters. He seemed to skim the information, and then handed the pad back.

"Ezmay Gabrielle Shepard Vakarian."

Ezmay looked at him blankly. _Come on, you bastard. You can open this interrogation better than that._

"You have something that belongs to me." His voice was as bland as his face.

Again, she said nothing.

Lightener made some impossibly small movement, perhaps the flick of a finger as he crossed his arms over his chest. The electricity jolted through her stronger this time. She jumped in her restraints, her body arching painfully. When it ceased, she sagged for real. Air couldn't get into her lungs quick enough. She gasped. In the back of her mind, there was a bloom of anger. Part of it was hers, part of it the phantom emotions that came fleeting through when Garrus was feeling something.

"Don't have anything of yours." She bit out, licking her lips. "Even if I did, you're not exactly asking nicely."

"That time is past." Again, Lightener's finger went up. Ezmay was prepared for the shock this time, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with. Her muscles clenched up and her back spasmed once more. The shock was longer, and when it was over, she was grateful that the gurney was inclined. At least she didn't have to support herself.

"I can have them turn the setting up, if you like. All you have to do is tell me where the data is, and this ends."

"I don't have your data. It's been destroyed." She said.

"For your sake, I hope you're lying." This time, Lightener turned his head towards the mirror.

It wasn't electricity that went through her; instead it was just raw pain. It overloaded her nerve endings and sent her head reeling. Vertigo came and went. Ezmay's shriek echoed off of the steel walls of the room. When the pain ceased, tears came streaming down her face from the blessed relief.

"I can't give you what I don't have!" She doubled over. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick. _Please, God, don't let me puke in front of these assholes._ What she was saying was technically true; the data was stored safely away in her quarters on the Normandy. It was wedged in between the lacy underthings that Garrus liked to strip off of her at night.

Lightener's eyes narrowed on her. He stepped closer, slid fingers through the hair hanging in her eyes. Funny. She half-expected him to smell like gun oil and cigars. Most of the mercenaries she had encountered had smelled like a mix of the two. Instead, he smelled like cedar. He balled up his fist, yanking her head up by her hair.

"Maybe you're telling me the truth. Maybe you're not. I have other ways to make you talk."

Ezmay snorted, smiled at him.

"You sound like a bad movie."

"Do I? What if I told you that one of my team blew a hole clean through your turian husband's heart? Should I have him fetch XO Vakarian's head in here for you to look at?"

For a moment…for a sheer moment, her heart lurched. She'd already been through that once today. She didn't want to hear it again. But she knew better. _She knew._ But he didn't.

It wasn't hard to cry. She let the tears well up and spill over, the combined stress of thinking the Normandy was lost again, thinking Garrus was lost forever, and worrying about the Reapers killing every damn thing in the galaxy. Ezmay let the tears fall and did her best to look at Lightener as if he'd broken her world.

"He's not…"

"He very well is. It was a blood bath. Him and your drell. At the end of the day, we couldn't tell where the drell ended and your turian began." When Lightener let go of her, she let her head drop.

The anger….it was all she could do to hold it back. The thuds of footfalls told her that Lightener was moving away, that his toadies were following.

_That's it. _She thought. _You're going to die screaming._


	15. Chapter 15

Torture was a bitch, when you came right down to it. Though, if it wasn't painful, it wouldn't be torture. To give Lightener credit, he didn't cause any lasting damage. Ezmay imagined that his later machinations might involve her having to move, or walk, or run, or something. If it did, she hadn't progressed to that level of torture yet. Her body wasn't broken; Lightener seemed much more focused on breaking her _mind._

There was no clock in the interrogation room where she was kept. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed since she'd woken and her initial encounter with Lightener. The only thing she was sure of was that _weeks_ had not passed, but that wasn't terribly reassuring.

Lightener had come back to visit her two times. Each time, he'd upped the ante. The first encounter after his initial interrogation, he'd put her through the paces of electrical shock. His flunky on the other side of the two-way mirror had gleefully ratcheted up the power on her restraints and had shocked her until she was dripping with sweat, exhausted, and afraid she was going to piss herself. Her heart had fluttered in a way that had truly frightened her, and she was relatively sure she'd lost consciousness and had to be revived. When she'd come to, she was stripped to the undershirt and sports bra she always wore under her armour and there'd been burns on her chest. It was a point of pride that she didn't say anything about the data disc. If Lightener's ministrations got much more enthusiastic, she thought she could hold out. Maybe.

After he'd left, Ezmay had relaxed against the gurney and tried to ignore the jumpiness in her muscles and the faint pressure in her bladder. She'd let her head slump and her eyes close, and within a few minutes, she'd slid off the precipice into sleep. This had ended abruptly when she'd been shocked again. Her skull cracked against the gurney as she'd jerked awake, danced along with the electricity. It had taken her a moment to orient herself when it was over, and she'd realized that they weren't going to let her sleep. Deprivation worked as well, if not better than pain. And so she'd resolved to stay awake as long as she could. Back in her training days, she'd undergone training with her Alliance squad mates in resisting torture. Although one could argue that getting up at four in the morning during basic training qualified as sleep deprivation and torture as well.

When Lightener came back the next time, he'd keyed up a program on his omni-tool. All at once, the room had been filled with the sounds of pain. Screaming, and hissing, interspersed by pleading for mercy. Her heart had seized at first, as she recognized the voice. It was Garrus, begging and pleading for relief from _whatever_ they were doing to him. For a moment she was on the brink of telling Lightener what he wanted to know. Almost. Then her mind had clicked and she realized that this wasn't real. The recording had been faked. The voice wasn't quite right; it had the flanging and the syntax didn't sound like it had been picked and spliced from previous recordings. No. It was something else that told her that it had been computer altered. Maybe it was some other poor turian bastard who'd been taken and tortured. The sound had been doctored, the voice lowered. It was close, and if she'd been any more sleep deprived or in pain, she might have thought it was him. Instead, she'd spat at Lightener's feet, hung her head, and endured yet another electrical shock.

Any time now, he'd be back in. She'd bet her ass on it. This captivity had to end. So far, he'd not let her out of the restraints, nor fed her, nor given her water. Sooner or later, she'd hit her breaking point.

'_I'm an epic badass.'_ She thought to herself, attempting to lighten her own mood. That's what Garrus would call her. _'But I've got limits.'_

To bide time, she leaned head back, let her eyes go out of focus, and retreated into memories. She let her mind drift back to the wedding night on the Citadel. Roses and romantic baths weren't really Garrus or Ezmay's style. They'd been surrounded by all the traditional accoutrements of a stereotypical honeymoon. Champagne, a heart-shaped hot tub, silk sheets. Instead, she'd cocked her head and asked Garrus if he wanted to spar. His mandibles had flared outward, and his voice was _so amused_.

'_We just got married_.' Her translator paused for a moment as it always did when he said that word. She'd spent some time with EDI researching the actual turian word and found that it wasn't exactly matched by anything in English. The turian word was something more like a blend of 'bonded,' 'mated,' and 'interlaced.' '_We've got all this romantic stuff we can do, and you'd rather fight?'_

Contrary to his words, his tone seemed quite agreeable to her suggestion. Even then, Ezmay realized, the bond had begun. She knew it by how she'd never questioned if he'd rather consummate the marriage via roses or fists. She just _knew._

'_What would you rather do, big guy?'_ She'd asked, as always inwardly astounded by how he inspired her inner slut. '_Would you rather crush rose petals against one another, or would you rather do what we do best?'_

He'd grabbed her suddenly then, talons going around her waist and jerking her up against his body. Her knees had gone weak as their breath mingled, face to face. A bulge lower on his anatomy ground into her hip, and she had her answer.

'_Later, rose petals. I need to diversify my romantic skills. Right now…'_ He'd nuzzled at the crook of her neck, his nose brushed up under her earlobe and her hair. '_Right now, I'm going to…'_

But he'd never finished that sentence. Usually they tussled and grappled at each other, each driving the other as far as they could towards the edge of pleasure. Usually, it was a contest to see how much pleasure they could wring out of one another, a joyful banquet of physical sensation born out of a burning need to see one another content in the moment. Usually, they were like children gleefully exploring the other, even though it was always conquered territory. That night, she'd given up control to him, letting his dominance wash over her and letting him claim her wholly. Enthusiastic practice guided him all the things she liked, and he held her back while he wrenched orgasms from her. In the morning, she'd slathered medi-gel on numerous bites, and remarked dryly about new scratches criss-crossing her hips and waist. He'd marked her in all the ways he could. The next night, they'd switched, and she was the one dominating him.

She smiled faintly in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lighting.

Nothing in the universe could snuff out something so beautiful. Not even a stone-cold bastard like Lightener.

"It's a curious thing, about your turian." The voice came from behind her. He snapped her out of reverie, and though she couldn't see Lightener, she knew he was there. She must have been wholly concentrating if she hadn't even heard the hiss of the door and his footfalls.

"I thought I'd never see you again." Ezmay remarked. "Hoped, actually."

"One of the first things the turian government did after Shanxi was dissect a dozen humans to figure out why scores of their soldiers were bonding with aliens."

She held her tongue; soon enough Lightener was circling around, still with that enigmatic half-grin on his face. He moved as a predator. Inspected her like she was the next meal for his young. The game had changed, that much was clear.

"They didn't find anything. Learned a lot about the human nervous system, though. In the end, they concluded that it must be psychological, rather than biological. Decided there must be something altogether dangerously seductive about human females that appealed to more weak-willed turian males. Have you ever wondered why it was so rare to find a human male paired with a turian female?"

"Can't say I ever gave it much thought." She replied. Instinct still told her that she needed to pick her words carefully. "Guess I always assumed it was because men found turian women butt-ugly."

"There's quite a bounty out for you right now. Did you know? Not only from the Shadow Broker, but also from some more unsavory elements. Doctors without ethics. Scientists. I'm surprised your pals at Cerberus haven't jumped on the chance to pull you and your turian apart piece by piece to see what makes you tick." Lightener moved forth then, and keyed a code into his omni tool. The restraints at her ankles went dark.

"I wouldn't say they're my pals. It's not like I hang out with them and drink beer on the weekends."

"You're an amusing woman, Ezmay Vakarian." A smile came and went on Lightener's face. He stopped fiddling with her restraints then, and got right up in her face. Ezmay could smell spearmint, laced with tobacco, on his breath. "In another life, I would have liked to have met you under different circumstances."

His hand went to her waist then, and Ezmay's stomach turned and went sour.

"This is the part…" Lightener said, a slow smile rolling over his lips. "where shit gets real, as you'd say."

Of course. Of course, this was how it went for female captives. Maybe he was a sadist and he did this with all captives. No way of telling. When Ezmay imagined it, try as she might not to, she imagined Garrus. And felt sheer, bone-splitting rage and revulsion.

"You got the cameras rolling back there?" She jerked her head towards the mirror, her hair catching on her chapped lips. Plan after plan went through her mind as Lightener's hand went under her tank top and over her ribs.

"You know it. Wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to send it to your turian."

Oh, God, if there was anything to send Garrus on a murderous rampage and ruin his judgment, it would be watching her rape.

"Well, how are you going to do this properly if you have me strapped to this table still?" She wiggled her fingers and cocked the corner of her mouth at him. "I mean, are you going to half-ass this, or what?"

Anything would work at this point. Anything to get these cuffs off. He'd freed her legs, but there was still the strap over her hips and the electric restraints on her wrists. If she could just get loose, she could do or risk anything. Maybe running her mouth could actually work to her advantage this time. Most of the time it just earned her an ass-kicking. At this point….that would do.

"I never half-ass anything, as you're about to find out." Lightener withdrew his hand and backed away. He unclipped the belt around his own waist, and laid it aside. When he came back closer, his fingers went up and seized a hank of her hair. Ezmay sucked in a breath, as if it hurt. It did, a little bit, but let him think he'd beaten her into submission.

"I'm not going to give in to you!" Somewhere, the line from one of those bottom-rack romance vids came to mind. In the movie, passion consumed the heroine and she'd delightedly spread her legs while feigning the chaste maiden.

Lightener seemed to find this beyond amusing. He leaned close and licked her collarbone. Ezmay resisted the urge to vomit on him. "You don't have to, sweetie."

"Jesus. What a pussy." She spat, and then laughed low in the back of her throat, as if he was contemptible.

_That_ he did not like. Ezmay felt his frown against her clavicle. A-ha. _Found the soft spot. Now to just twist it for all it's worth._

"A pussy, am I?" He fixed those steel-grey eyes on her. Somewhere deep inside them, she saw murder.

Ezmay swallowed hard and steeled herself.

"Did I fucking stutter?"

She had it all planned out in her mind, but Lightener freeing her from the table happened so fast that she wasn't sure she would have time before he was doing something terrible to her. In the space of time between registering Lightener's rage and finding her face pressed to the steel table he'd set his gun belt on, he'd undone the restraints, seized a handful of her shirt, and literally thrown her through space. Her fists drummed on the table and she was already arching, twisting up and trying to face him. Lightener's weight felt like a million tons on her back. They grappled, his hands twisting up one of her arms behind her back, the other nearly crushing her shoulder. Ezmay swung her free elbow back, connecting with Lightener's ribs, and was rewarded with a muffled grunt. It was just enough to shift his weight sideways, and Ezmay rolled with him. They toppled from the table, landing on the floor. She came down on top of him, his hand still on her wrist.

If it were Garrus, this kind of compromising position would have been exciting.

Without thought, adrenaline pumping, she slammed her forehead down into Lightener's nose. It cracked, and a torrent of warm blood spattered everywhere. Fingers slipped loose of her wrist, and Ezmay took the opportunity. She lunged, pushing his chin up with both hands, and sank blunt teeth into the flesh of his throat.

Salt burst into her mouth as she broke skin. Ezmay bit harder, really grinding her teeth in. If she weren't pumped, really and truly jazzed, she probably wouldn't have done the damage that she did. When she had a good gob of flesh in her mouth, she clenched her jaw down and kicked herself back. Lightener screamed.

With that, she was up and moving for the table. The gun from his belt felt good in her hands. With this, she could really dole out some pain. And dole out she did. Ezmay turned, swung back towards Lightener and brought her foot back. She aimed for his crotch, thankful that the creep had removed his codpiece when he'd been gearing up for the rape.

_And now, to kick myself a field goal._

She spat the bit of flesh out of her mouth, and let go with, what she thought, was the kick of the century. Lightener apparently did not care for her choice of target. His second scream actually reverberated around the room with such force that it made her ears ring.

Then she put two rounds in his face.

"Good riddance, fucker." Blood was running down her chin, but she didn't spare a moment to wipe it off.

She turned next to the two way mirror, and dealt two more rounds through the glass. It shattered.

Behind the mirror was enough recording equipment to refit the Citadel's security system if it ever glitched out. For a second, she was tempted to empty the clip of her gun into the consoles, but she couldn't spare the bullets. And someone had to have heard the gunshots.

Sweat trickled down her back underneath the ruined shirt.

Ezmay clambered up onto the console. Couldn't escape into the hallways. Too many guards, too many people. Her eyes flicked up over the ventilation shaft. That would do.

A flat display screen was nearest her and Ezmay settled the gun down the waistband of her trousers. She lifted the display screen with shaking arms, pulling the cords loose, and rammed it into the vents. It took three tries before she'd made a big enough hole to wiggle through. The jagged metal tore at her clothes and skin as she wormed her way in. At last she was settled in, covered in dust and breathing air that tasted stale. The shaft wasn't big enough to stand upright, or even to crawl on all fours. She scuttled forward, pushing herself with her knees and elbows. All that mattered was putting some distance between herself and Lightener's corpse.


End file.
